Pence: Trump will make decision on DACA with ‘big heart’

Vice President Pence said Thursday that President Trump is mulling action on the program allowing people brought to the U.S. illegally as children, sometimes referred to as “Dreamers,” to stay and obtain work permits.

“President Trump has said all along that he’s giving very careful consideration to that issue and that when he makes his decision, he’ll make it, as he likes to say, with a big heart,” Pence told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl.

“And I know that he will,” added Pence, who is visiting Texas amid relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

Trump is reportedly considering ending the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has allowed nearly 800,000 people brought to the U.S. as children to receive work permits and deferred deportation.

{mosads}Fox News, citing a senior administration official, reported earlier Thursday that Trump planned to end the program “as it exists today” and that he could act “as early as” Friday.

The program established through an executive order signed by President Obama in 2012 is facing a possible legal challenge from Texas and nine other states, which have threatened court action unless Trump rescinds it by Sept. 5.

White House officials on Thursday maintained that no decision has been made on the program.

“A final decision on that front has not been made,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the daily press briefing. “When we have a final decision, this is under review, there are a lot of components that need to be looked at.”

White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert also said that the administration is “still reviewing the policy,” while arguing that the lawsuits “won’t affect the policy decision, but it will affect the timing of it.”

“We certainly have to watch the lawsuits and how they matriculate through the courts and when the deadlines will be.”