President Obama’s unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood of Arrivals (DACA) program has been regularly been portrayed as a “necessary” step to “protect” illegal aliens brought here as children, “through no fault of their own.” However, that description does not fit the reality of the program. Now that Congress may consider a blanket amnesty for DACA recipients, here’s what Americans who care about border security and public safety should know:
- Most of the DACA recipients are not “kids.” The average age of the DACA “kids” is approximately 20 years old, many are between 23 and 26 years old. Applications were accepted from anyone under the age of 31, as of June 15, 2012. Accordingly, most of the people who benefited from the DACA program were adults.
- People with a criminal record were allowed to apply for DACA. The DACA program was supposedly “safe” because it prohibited applications from people with criminal backgrounds. However, the DACA requirements only excluded people with a felony conviction, a conviction for a significant misdemeanor, or convictions for three or more non-significant misdemeanors. That means applicants who already had a criminal record, in addition to being illegal aliens, were granted temporary amnesty under the program. In addition, individuals with disqualifying criminal convictions were often approved if they could show “exceptional circumstances.”
- DACA applicants were not subjected to the same background checks as other immigration benefits applicants. In order to process DACA requests more quickly, the Obama administration only performed “Lean and Lite” background checks on applicants. This means the DACA “kids” were subjected only to an abbreviated version of an already weak vetting system. At least six known security risks were inadvertently granted DACA as a result of weak vetting procedures.
- Over 2,000 DACA recipients have been accused, or convicted, of crimes against Americans. Not all of the DACA “kids” were valedictorians, veterans, or entrepreneurs. The Department of Homeland Security canceled the DACA status of 2,139 recipients because they were convicted of a crime after having been granted deferred action.
- United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved between 88 and 90 percent of all DACA applications it received. By December of 2015, USCIS had received approximately 770,000 DACA applications. It approved roughly 715,000 and rejected around 55,000. The majority of the rejected applications contained obviously fraudulent information. USCIS did not refer denied applicants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. The high approval rate was likely due to the fact that USCIS only interviewed about .03% of DACA applicants. USCIS detects a significant number of security risks and a large amount of fraud during in-person interviews.
Clearly the DACA narrative being pushed by the mainstream media does not match the realities of the program. Candidate Trump won the presidency, largely because Americans believed his promises that he would eliminate President Obama’s illegal amnesty program and secure our borders. President Trump kept his promise. However, his desire to legalize the DACA “kids,” coupled with Congress’ apparent willingness to sell-out the American public in order to benefit illegal aliens, has sent a clear message to immigration violators: “Feel free to break our laws, we’ll just reward you.” If all of our political leaders are busy worrying about “doing the right thing” for the illegal aliens who got DACA, who’s looking out for the safety and security of the American public?