How the original DREAM act was designed to cover 90% of the illegal alien population in the U.S.

Today DACA (Deferred Action-Childhood Arrivals) is a major issue for the Trump administration, with politicians from both parties attempting to persuade President Trump to provide lawful status for the illegal aliens who had been granted temporary lawful status in an ill-conceived and, indeed, illegal program that had been implemented by President Obama, a politically adept manipulator of language and a master of deception.

On December 18th I participated in an interview on Fox News to discuss DACA and the fact that according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) legalizing the estimated population of “Dreamers” would cost an estimated $26 billion.

On January 9th President Trump conducted a bi-partisan White House meeting to consider a compromise that would provide lawful immigration status for the approximately 800,000 illegal aliens who enrolled in DACA. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, Trump seeks a “bill of love” from Congress for “Dreamers”

The “deal” would require funding a border wall, ending “chain migration” and perhaps, making E-Verify mandatory.  Of course without an adequate number of ICE agents, mandatory E-Verify would be of limited value since unscrupulous employers could simply hire illegal aliens “off the books” and without agents to conduct field investigations these criminally deceptive employment practices would not be discovered.

President Trump’s previous call for hiring an additional 10,000 ICE agents was not mentioned by the participants in the meeting.  This is extremely worrisome.

A lack of effective interior enforcement of our immigration laws, has for decades, undermined the integrity of the immigration system. In fact the 9/11 Commission cited the lack of interior enforcement as a key vulnerability that terrorists, and not only the 9/11 hijackers, had exploited to embed themselves in the U.S. in preparation to carrying out deadly attacks.

DACA was a travesty foisted on America and Americans by the Obama administration, from its inception, was a scam based on lies and false suppositions. Legalizing these 800,000 illegal aliens would, in point of fact, legitimize Obama’s illegal action.

Obama claimed that he was invoking “prosecutorial discretion” when he stood in the White House Rose Garden on June 15, 2012 and announced that “since Congress failed to act” (to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform) he was going to act by creating DACA. But in reality Congress did act: it voted down legislation known as Comprehension Immigration Reform and, in so doing, took an action that is consistent with the role of Congress as established by the U.S. Constitution that created the system of “checks and balances.”

For Mr. Obama, however, the problem was that Congress did not act the way he wanted it to act.

Two days after that speech in 2012, I wrote an Op-Ed, “Obama Invokes Prosecutorial Discretion to Circumvent Constitution and Congress,” in which I noted that what Obama had referred to as “Prosecutorial Discretion” should, in reality, be referred to as “Prosecutorial Deception.”

Legitimate use of prosecutorial discretion can provide a pragmatic solution to real-world limitations of law enforcement resources in a manner comparable to a triage.  For example, law enforcement officers frequently ignore relatively minor violations of law so that those limited resources can be available to address more serious violations of law.  Consider, for example, the police officer operating speed radar who ignores cars that exceed the speed limit by a small margin, but are being otherwise driven in a safe manner.  This enables the police officer to focus on vehicles that are being driven dangerously.

Under DACA, however, illegal aliens were not ignored to conserve limited resources.  In fact, limited resources were not conserved but were squandered to provide temporary lawful status to a huge number of illegal aliens without legal authority or justification.

Moreover, DACA constituted the de facto creation of law without the legislative process, but by unconstitutional executive fiat.

Let’s now consider the notion of “deferred action,” the foundation upon which DACA was purportedly created.  There are legitimate provisions in the immigration system to provide aliens with “deferred action” when it is a matter of compassion, for humanitarian purposes.  The key word is “deferred.”  What is deferred is the ultimate required departure of non-immigrant aliens.

For example, if a family from another country lawfully came to the United States as non-immigrants for a temporary visit with friends or relatives in the United States and one of the members of the family was injured in an accident or became ill, those aliens could apply for deferred action so that they would not have to leave the United States until the family crisis was resolved.

As an INS agent I dealt with such cases.  Generally the doctor who was treating the injured or ill family member would provide documentation to immigration authorities to verify the medical situation, with periodic updates.

As an INS special agent I was responsible for conducting investigations to make certain that applications were not fraudulent.

Generally these aliens would not be granted employment authorization except under the most extraordinary of circumstances if they needed to remain in the United States for a protracted period of time. However, DACA essentially “dropped a net” over 800,000 illegal aliens, not out of humanitarian concerns because of an unforeseen emergency but as a means of achieving a political objective.

Obama claimed that his action was to help young people who were brought to the United States by their parents and, consequently, were the victims of their parents’ actions over which they had no control.

Obama was counting on the fact that Americans are among the most compassionate people in the world, especially where children are concerned.  Media reports furthered this narrative and, to this day, many ill-informed Americans believe that all aliens who participated in DACA were teenagers. But in fact, the age cutoff was actually 31.  These aliens simply needed to claim that they had been brought to the United States prior to their 16th birthdays.  Those aliens today might now be as old as 36 years of age.  DACA should have been called DACCA (Deferred Action- Claimed Childhood Arrivals).

There were virtually no interviews or field investigations to verify any information or claims contained in the applications.

(The DREAM Act would have allowed aliens as old as 35 years of age to apply to participate in the amnesty that would have been created had the legislation passed.)

It is vital to note that even the term DREAM Act and the derivative term “Dreamers” is hypocritical.  Ever since the administration of Jimmy Carter, the term “Alien” has been eradicated from the immigration debate, not out of supposed “political correctness” but as a means of Orwellian thought control and Newspeak.

However, the “DREAM Act” is an acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act.  It is maddening that when the imagery of the “American Dream” can be exploited, the term “alien” becomes palatable — but only when used in conjunction with this bit of Orwellian deception.

If the purpose of the DREAM Act was to help young illegal aliens, why did the politicians and “Gang of Eight” not simply limit it to aliens who had not yet attained the age of 21 and who could provide immigration authorities with their current school transcripts and report cards to verify their status as students in good standing?

What was never discussed in the mainstream media is that the whole point to the DREAM Act, pushed by some members of Congress and particularly the “Gang of Eight,” was to construct a legislated immigration “Trojan Horse.”

The DREAM Act established 35 years of age as the cutoff age for this amnesty because it would have covered an estimated 90% of the illegal alien population in the United States.  Furthermore, without the ability to conduct interviews, let alone field investigations, aliens could easily lie about their identities, their dates of birth and even their dates of entry into the United States.

There would be no way for adjuration officers to refute the claims of the aliens who participated in the program.

The DREAM Act was a carefully disguised version of failed legislation known as Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

In 2007, after I testified about Comprehensive Immigration Reform before several hearings in the House and Senate, I wrote an Op-Ed for the Washington Times, Immigration bill a ‘No Go’ in which I suggested that the legislative disaster be renamed the “Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act” because under that legislation, millions of illegal aliens who had entered the United States surreptitiously and without inspection, would have been provided with lawful status and official identity documents.

This would have violated the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, to which I provided testimony.

I was gratified when then-Senator Jeff Sessions quoted my Op-Ed from the floor of the U.S. Senate during the contentious floor debate on Comprehensive Immigration Reform on three separate days, in which he shared my concerns and my proposed new name for that legislation.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) created a massive amnesty program that ultimately led to the greatest influx of illegal aliens in the history of our nation.  It has been said that insanity is doing the same things the same way and expecting a different outcome.

As a highly successful real estate magnate, President Trump must especially understand that just as it is unwise to erect a building on a swamp, legislation must be constructed on morally and legally solid ground.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.