I want to back up and talk a little bit about what we are actually
trying to do here. There are two key components to this bill and to
efforts that have gone before the point at which we have introduced
this bill that I think are very important. The first one is the DACA Program. That is Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals. The DACA Program is something that was implemented
in 2012 by President Obama. What President Obama sought to do was to
provide some certainty for young adults and children who were brought
across the border--not through their own decisions but through the
decisions of their parents or a guardian to cross the border
illegally--and find themselves illegally present in the United States. Today, they are still protected because they are still protected under
DACA, but the President announced on September 5 that on March 5 that
program would end. Now, you can imagine that there are hundreds of thousands of young
men and women who are uncertain about their future status in this
country. It is a problem we need to solve. The other side of the
equation is something that is also equally important to me and to a
number of people in this body. It has to do with our border security
and interior enforcement. Back in late winter, I spent a week down on the southern border. I
went to the Rio Grande Sector and the West Texas Sector.
Keywords matched
border security DACA