FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 9, 2018

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Juan Gastelum, 213-375-3149
Hayley Burgess, 202-384-1279

The Bipartisan Dream Act Is a “Bill of Love”

WASHINGTON — President Trump today met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to discuss immigration. At the meeting, which was broadcast on national television, Trump appeared to endorse a narrow legislative deal to provide a pathway to U.S. citizenship for immigrant youth, which he called a “bill of love.”

Trump created a crisis in September when he ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, upending the lives of nearly 800,000 young people covered by the program. Every day, an estimated 122 DACA recipients lose their eligibility to work in the U.S. and become vulnerable to detention and deportation.

Kamal Essaheb, policy and advocacy director at the National Immigration Law Center, issued the following statement:

“We need a real solution for Dreamers now — one that doesn’t use them as pawns to enact an extremist anti-immigrant agenda. With more than 15,000 DACA recipients having already lost their protections and many more facing an uncertain future, we hope that today’s meeting wasn’t a wasted day for Congress and the White House.

“Dreamers don’t need photo ops and empty words — they need lawmakers to do their jobs. If Trump is serious about signing a “bill of love,” the bipartisan Dream Act would resolve this crisis once and for all, without harming anybody.”

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