California Democrats ask Obama to pardon nearly 750,000 ‘Dreamers’

The members of Congress who convinced President Obama to grant temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of people brought into the country illegally as children are now asking him to protect them from being deported under President-elect Donald Trump.

California Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Downey) and Illinois Rep. Luis Gutiérrez sent a letter to Obama Thursday asking him to use the pardon authority granted to him by Article II of the U.S. Constitution to forgive the past and future civil immigration offenses of nearly 750,000 people.

That would keep them from being deported, but would leave them in legal limbo without work permits or visas. Without an immigration offense on their records, it would be substantially easier to apply for legal status.

“They wouldn’t have a piece of paper, they wouldn’t have work authorization, but they wouldn’t have to be living in fear every moment of their lives about deportation,” Lofgren said after a news conference announcing the letter.

Lofgren, a former immigration attorney, said the pardoned charges would likely be the civil offenses of entry without authorization and presence without authorization.

After efforts to address immigration stalled in Congress, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus pressured Obama to act alone to protect certain illegal immigrants brought into the country as children. He used an executive order to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The so-called Dreamers, one in three of whom are estimated to live in California, gave the Department of Homeland Security their fingerprints, home addresses and other information to undergo background checks that allowed them to get temporary legal status under DACA.

Advocates and the administration stressed at the time that providing the information would give them legal status and was worth the risk. But with President-elect Donald Trump vowing to deport millions of people in the country illegally and expected to let the DACA program end, Dreamers are worried the information they provided will be used to deport them.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), whose husband is an immigration attorney, said at the news conference she’s getting a flood of messages from frightened Dreamers. On Tuesday she sent a letter to Obama asking him tokeep their information from the Trump administration.

“We promised these recipients security, and now they are facing a nightmare,” she said.

Roybal-Allard said those who pushed Obama to create the program and convinced people to come out of the shadows and register with the government are obligated to protect those who did.

“These are kids. We feel a sense of responsibility. We went out into our districts and we talked to the Dreamers, and they asked us, ‘Is it really ok for us to do this?’” Roybal-Allard said. “And we said, ‘No, don’t worry, you need to come forward.’ Now we are in a situation where all that we said, in fact, could possibly be reversed.”

Although the president’s pardon power is normally used for individual cases, there is some precedent for the president to pardon a large group of people.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter pardoned half a million Vietnam War draft dodgers, and at least seven other presidents have issued broad pardons.

Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court cannot undo a presidential pardon, nor can a new president.

Lofgren said if Obama doesn’t want to pardon the Dreamers, she hopes he’ll respond with his own idea.

“These young people are not alone, they are not going to be abandoned by us,” she said.