Kobach on Dreamers: ‘Correct policy’ is to ‘deport the whole family’

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on Wednesday defended President Trump’s decision to end a key Obama-era immigration program, saying that families of immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children should be deported.

“They came in presumably with a parent or parents, and so the correct policy is for us to enforce federal law and deport the whole family to the home country,” Kobach said during an appearance on CNN.

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Kobach, who serves as co-chairman of Trump’s voter fraud commission and has been a fierce critic of illegal immigration, blasted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that Trump said Tuesday he would end.

The Kansas secretary of state called DACA a “slap in the face” to immigrants waiting to enter the country legally, saying he doesn’t consider it wrong to ask DACA recipients to go back to their birth country and apply to re-enter the U.S.

Immigrants had formerly qualified for DACA if they arrived in the U.S. as a minor, passed a background check and gained a work permit to stay in the country. Under the program, about 800,000 people in the U.S. were protected from deportation.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that the administration would end the program, phasing it out over the next six months. 

Trump called on Congress to pass legislation in the next six months to help those affected by his decision to end the program.