Trump to DACA recipients: Democrats ‘are using you’

President Trump on Friday sought to assure beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that Republicans were working to resolve their fates in the U.S. after a provision to protect them was omitted in the government funding bill.

Speaking at the White House after signing a massive $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, Trump asserted that Democrats had refused to include legal protections for young undocumented immigrants in the spending measure.

{mosads}“The Republicans are with you. They want to get your situation taken care of,” Trump said. “The Democrats fought us. They fought every single inch of the way. They did not want DACA in this bill.”

He addressed DACA recipients and the “Hispanic community” directly in his remarks, accusing Democrats of “using” them for political gain. 

“I do want the Hispanic community to know and DACA recipients to know that Republicans are much more on your side than the Democrats, who are using you for their own purposes,” Trump said. 

The president’s comments — and his decision to sign the spending bill — came hours after he said he was considering a veto of the legislation, venting frustration with the fact that it did not resolve the fates of DACA recipients and decrying its lack of funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump has repeatedly argued that Democratic lawmakers have opposed his proposed solutions for DACA, an Obama-era program that temporarily shielded certain undocumented immigrants from deportation. Trump announced in September he would rescind the program.

But Democrats have bristled at Trump’s proposals, which they argue contain so-called “poison pills” — like curbing legal immigration — that they cannot support.