Report: Trump willing to extend March 5 DACA deadline if Congress doesn't act
If Congress doesn't take action to fix former President Obama's program that has deferred deportations for people who came to the U.S. illegally as children, the Trump administration plans to extend a March 5 deadline on their protections, according to The Washington Post.
President Trump said last month that he was willing to "give it some more time," according to Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, the report said.
"The president's comment to me was that, 'We put a six-month deadline out there. Let's work it out. If we can't get it worked out in six months, we'll give it some more time, but we've got to get this worked out legislatively,' " Lankford told the Post outside a Tulsa town hall Thursday.
The Trump administration announced in early September that it was ending the 2012 program that has deferred deportations for more than 780,000 people who came to the U.S. illegally as children, allowing the so-called "Dreamers" to go to school and work openly.
For people whose DACA status is set to expire by March 5, 2018, they were required to reapply to renew their status by Oct. 5, last week. Right now, for people whose DACA protection expires on March 6, 2018, if they have not already submitted a renewal application, they would be subject to deportation as of that date.
The president has called on Congress to provide a legislative fix by March 5.
