Anti-immigrant hard-liners bullied Trump into killing DACA

Does President Donald Trump control his base or does his base control him?

The answer became less clear on Tuesday when the Trump administration announced the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects from deportation about 800,000 undocumented immigrants who came over as children — also known as Dreamers. Their fate is now in the hands of Congress, which has six months to pass legislation before the program is officially revoked.

The White House just raised the degree of difficulty on that front by saying it wants “responsible immigration reform” instead of a bill just focusing on DACA. “You can’t just have one tweak to the immigration system,” said Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

But the repeal is a marked reversal for Trump, who as recently as three weeks ago told the Associated Press that the “Dreamers should rest easy.” Trump had promised on the campaign trail to “immediately terminate” the program, but he has repeatedly backed away from that pledge since the November election, promising to show “heart” and having his Department of Homeland Security continue to renew DACA eligibility.

READ: Dreamers are plotting how to fight back when Trump kills DACA

Many Republican lawmakers, while critical of President Obama’s unilateral move in 2012 to impose DACA, have publicly criticized the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the program without a congressional fix in place. Some of these Republicans are the usual critics, like Sen. John McCain of Arizona, but others like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. Orrin Hatch are usually shy about criticizing the president in public. The Republican-aligned Chamber of Commerce also released a strongly worded statement blasting the decision, saying it “runs contrary to the president’s goal of growing the U.S. economy.”

DACA is also popular among voters. According to a Morning Consult/Politico poll from April, 78 percent of registered voters supported giving Dreamers the opportunity to remain in the U.S., including 73 percent of the people who voted for Trump last November.

But Trump changed course in response to immense pressure from immigration hard-liners in the nativist wing of the GOP that propelled him to the Republican nomination and then the presidency. Those forces, which include 10 attorneys general from red states, anti-immigration think tanks, and Breitbart, cheered Tuesday’s decision, which was announced by fellow immigration hawk Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

READ: A radical anti-immigrant group infiltrated the GOP

“I applaud President Trump for phasing out DACA,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a statement. Paxton and nine other state attorneys general had threatened in June to sue the Trump administration if it did not phase out DACA by Sept. 5.

Trump was further boxed in by his own attorney general, who said he would not defend DACA in court. “The Department of Justice cannot defend this type of overreach,” Sessions said on Tuesday. Sessions argued, as he did when he was an Alabama senator, that President Obama exceeded presidential authority with DACA and that the program was unconstitutional because it steamrolled existing immigration law.

READ: Jeff Sessions just ordered the phase-out of DACA

Like many of the other “America First” forces, Sessions has framed undocumented immigration in populist terms, warning that “illegal aliens” are being brought in by corporations for cheap labor at the expense of American workers.

“I’m sure this will make the activists, the politicians, and certain billionaire executives who enjoy dinner parties at the White House very happy that the president is doing these things,” Sessions said of DACA in 2014. “But what about what’s good for America? What about what’s in the interest of the American people? America is not an oligarchy.”

Many have argued, however, that the economic arguments from Sessions and others are dishonest. A recent report from the libertarian CATO Institute, the liberal Center for American Progress, and the Mark Zuckerberg-funded FWD.us, found that ending DACA would cost $460.2 billion in GDP over the next decade.

But those arguments did not make headway in the White House. The so-called “nativist lobby” — the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies — celebrated Tuesday’s news, saying it was better late than never. Sessions has long-standing ties to all three organizations, two of which are designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“The lawsuit by Texas and other states really held him accountable,” said Robert Law, director of FAIR government relations. “My understanding is that Sessions advised the president that he could not defend his policy if he kept it, due to limited resources. It would be a waste of taxpayer dollars to litigate a case that had no merits.”

“President Trump has delivered a wonderful Labor Day present to unemployed American millennials by ordering the end of former President Obama’s unconstitutional issuing of work permits under the DACA amnesty,” said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA.

Breitbart News, headed again by Steve Bannon after he left his post as White House chief strategist last month, also celebrated Tuesday’s announcement.

Breitbart’s chief White House reporter tweeted:

And Breitbart News framed the announcement as Trump embracing their movement:

The fight now moves to Congress. If they fail to do anything, however, some inside the White House doubt Trump will follow through on Tuesday’s announcement, according to Politico. It’s unclear what the base will do then.