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Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive for Easter services at Episcopal church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive for Easter services at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida. Photograph: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Trump's Easter gift: no more DACA

The president bewildered the country with a series of messages on Twitter last Sunday announcing that he was withdrawing any deal on DACA from the table.

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For many, Easter Sunday is a family, quiet and deeply spiritual day, but President Trump transformed this date into a dark episode for the immigrant community.

In a series of "characteristically aggressive" Tweets, Trump announced that any agreement to protect undocumented young immigrants who arrived in the country as children (called Dreamers) was over, The Guardian reported.

The message thread was published "a few minutes after wishing Americans a happy Easter Sunday," the New York Times continued. The president was participating in the religious celebrations at the Bethesda-by-the-Sea church in Florida, from where he wrote that "Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous and liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch and Release. Getting more dangerous 'caravans' coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!"

Similarly, the president continued to blame the Democratic Party and the Mexican government, raising the "tone" of his messages by even threatening to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which is still being negotiated.

This announcement has once again revealed the president’s uninformed and speculative decisions that are frequently perceived as "U-turns on policy", according to The Guardian.

For James Hohmann, an analyst for the Washington Post, "Donald Trump is either woefully uninformed or intentionally misleading the American people about one of his most consequential decisions as president."

The columnist makes reference to the statements of the president before entering the ecclesiastical service in which he assured of the hand of his wife that "A lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA and we’re going to have to really see," the BBC quoted. "They had a great chance, the Democrats blew it."

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Trump again fell into statements without proper knowledge since the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA) was created by Barack Obama to protect immigrants "who have lived in the United States since 2007, have arrived in the country before they turned 16 and have been younger than 31 on June 15, 2012. Anyone who came after does not qualify," said Hohmann.

Criticism and concern immediately emerged in social media, including comments from political analysts and representatives who showed their indignation at the imprudence of presidential decisions.

The Hispanic Caucus in Congress, for example, recalled that "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, as immigrants and refugees, sought a place to live and work, hoping for a compassionate human response."

Also, the Democratic representative of the 40th district of California, Lucille Roybal-Allard, said that "Those of us who care about the DACA recipients will keep fighting to protect them, no matter how much this president keeps spreading hate and fear.”

Despite the apparent presidential intransigence, the sentence of two minor courts provisionally maintains the DACA program, and the solution remains in the hands of a Congress headed by a narrow Republican majority that, if it decided to follow the orders of its chieftain, could suffer the consequences when they surely lose control of the judicial body next November. 

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