President Trump tweeted last week that young immigrants brought to the U.S. by their parents, known as DREAMers, “have nothing to worry about.” Many DREAMers aren’t buying it, NPR reports. (DREAMer is a term derived from the proposed Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act.) They say the Trump administration gave them a new headache with a veiled threat to use the personal information they gave the government to deport them.
The administration said it would end the Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, in March unless Congress salvages it. A post by the Department of Homeland Security says that the personal information provided by DACA recipients won’t be “proactively” shared with immigration enforcement agents. There’s an exception if a person “poses a risk to national security or public safety, or meets the criteria for the issuance of a Notice To Appear or a referral to ICE under the criteria.” It says the privacy policy can be modified or rescinded at any time without notice. “What that means in plain English is when ICE wants to place someone in removal proceedings, it can ask for any information it wants to do that,” says Leon Fresco, an immigration attorney who worked in the Obama Justice Department. “And the administration has not denied this meaning.” Fresco says if DACA is ended and DREAMers lose their status, they would want to avoid any interaction with law enforcement because their likelihood of being detained and turned over to ICE would be very high.