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Former Vice President Joe Biden condemned the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program on Tuesday. “These people are all Americans,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “So let’s be clear: throwing them out is cruel. It is inhumane. And it is not America.”
Vox’s Dara Lind has explained how the Trump administration’s decision will ultimately put nearly 800,000 immigrants who came to America as children at risk of deportation. President Obama unilaterally implemented the program in 2012 after Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act, which would have put young immigrants on a path to legalization.
Biden, who has already created a political action committee amid rumors of a 2020 presidential bid, has been far more likely to wade into political controversy than Barack Obama since the Trump administration began. In July, Biden lobbied Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) before the Obamacare repeal vote. More recently, the former vice president wrote an Atlantic editorial urging America to reject white supremacists who, he says, have been encouraged by President Donald Trump.
“These children didn’t choose to come here, but now many of them are grown with families of their own. They’re paying taxes. They’ve joined the workforce. They went to college. Some of them joined the military,” Biden said. “Now, they’ll be sent to countries they don’t even remember.”
Read Biden’s statement on the Trump administration’s decision to end DACA in full:
Imagine a young girl, age 4 or 5, traveling with her parents into the United States as they make the hard decision to pursue a better life here. Imagine that child growing up as your student, your co-worker, your friend. Because of the president’s decision today, she now must live in fear that she will soon be thrown out and sent back to a country she has never known.
This story speaks to the experience of roughly 800,000 people known as DREAMers here in America today. These children didn’t choose to come here, but now many of them are grown with families of their own. They’re paying taxes. They’ve joined the workforce. They went to college. Some of them joined the military. Now, they’ll be sent to countries they don’t even remember.
These people are all Americans. So let’s be clear: throwing them out is cruel. It is inhumane. And it is not America. Congress and the American people now have an obligation to step up and show our neighbors that they’re welcome here, in the only place they’ve ever called home.
