Dreamers need protection, not mere words

President Donald Trump and his top aides don’t seem to be on the same page when it comes to his promised immigration crackdown.

President Donald Trump and his top aides don’t seem to be on the same page when it comes to his promised immigration crackdown.

To wit, Trump’s now-suspended travel ban on incoming residents of seven majority Muslim nations appears to have been implemented, as CNN reported, at the behest of White House advisers Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, without input from Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. This led to two days of infighting about whether it should apply to the legal U.S. residents from those seven nations who have green cards, as Bannon and Miller wanted. Kelly won that fight.

Now, there’s another public fight about how far the crackdown should go, this time about whether to end former President Barack Obama’s executive order giving some legal protections to more than 1 million young immigrants known colloquially as Dreamers, who have clean or relatively clean legal records and currently are in school, have a GED or high school degree, or served in the military. The president repeatedly has sounded sympathetic to them, including calling them “these incredible kids” last week.

Less than a day later, however, the Associated Press revealed it obtained a copy of a draft of a shocking but quickly disavowed Homeland Security memo calling for the use of up to 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants.

Was this leaked to remind Trump of how tough he talked on the campaign trail? Or was it leaked to discredit the proposal?

No one can be sure in our chaotic capital. But the leak can’t help but inspire fear in immigrant communities, including among the Dreamers who Trump admires.

That’s unfortunate. When Trump finally decides on Obama’s order, here’s hoping his humane instincts come to the fore.

— The San Diego Union-Tribune