John Kelly: Trump won’t extend DACA next month — but deporting DREAMers won’t be a priority

This is the smart political play on both sides of the equation. If Kelly hints that Trump might break his pledge and extend the deadline to end the program on March 5, populists will freak out and the pressure on Congress to make a deal on a DACA fix will evaporate.

But if he cranks up the pressure by claiming that DACA enrollees will land squarely on the chopping block for ICE once their eligibility expires, a lot of Americans will be unhappy. There are few political questions that draw very heavy majorities in polling nowadays but legalizing DREAMers is one.

Just one question. Declaring that DREAMers aren’t a priority for deportation feels a little bit like … executive amnesty, doesn’t it? By no means is it the same as DACA, which took the extraordinary step of making enrollees eligible for work permits by Obama’s kingly decree. But if the White House chief of staff is publicly nudging DHS not to remove young illegals whose eligibility has lapsed, he’s more or less greenlighting the idea of letting them stay put inside the U.S. as official policy. They’ll be back in the, ahem, “shadows,” with their right to remain under a cloud, but they won’t be removed for the time being. Is that meaningfully different from amnesty?

“I doubt very much” Trump would extend the program, Kelly told reporters during an impromptu interview at the U.S. Capitol…

At the Capitol, Kelly reiterated the administration’s position that dreamers “are not a priority for deportation” presuming they avoid breaking the law.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has said previously that her department would not target dreamers for deportation. But Nielsen said in an interview last month with CBS News that DHS will “enforce the law.”

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