That's Juan Escalante. When he was 11 years old, Juan and his family
came to the United States from Venezuela, where life had become dangerous. We were driving, and we stopped at a red light. Juan made it to college, and graduated. But, because he was undocumented, he couldn’t
work, and he worried about being deported. But that changed in June of 2012. Effective immediately, the Department
of Homeland Security is taking steps to lift the shadow of deportation from these young
people. If you’d come to the US when you were under 16. Then you could apply for the Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA program -- basically, a permit that protects you from getting deported,
and allows you to work legally in the U.S. Juan got this protection, and so did nearly
800,000 others who applied. But now, that protection is gone. I'm here to announce that the program known as
DACA, that was effectuated under the Obama administration, is being rescinded. DACA was designed to protect a generation of young undocumented immigrants known as
DREAMers, named after a bill called the Dream Act
which had been floating around Congress for more than a decade,
with bipartisan support. The bill would have given unauthorized immigrants
who grew up in the US a way to gain legal status and eventually apply for citizenship. And even though it fell short of 60 Senate
votes in 2010, the idea was still popular with the American public. When President Obama announced
DACA, it was in the middle of the 2012 Presidential
campaign, but it didn't turn into a huge campaign issue, because Republicans were really ambivalent, about turning immigration
into a wedge issue. We need to help accommodate these kids,
who through no fault of their own find themselves in this legal limbo. We cannot forever have children who
were brought here by their parents when they were small children to live in the shadows. But in 2014, Obama proposed making older immigrants
eligible for DACA, and creating similar protections against deportation
for undocumented parents with children who were US citizens. And a lot of Republicans said,
"whoa, that's too far." These new actions would have protected about
4.5 million people -- nearly half the estimated undocumented population. A group of 26 states sued the Obama administration
over the expansion. And they won. A federal judge stopped the DACA expansions
from going into effect — hinting that they were probably unconstitutional. People had started thinking back to, well
if those bigger programs were unconstitutional, what does that say about this DACA program
that's already in place? Then came Donald Trump. Trump: When Mexico sends its people, they’re
not sending their best. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing
crime. They’re rapists. Once Donald Trump became the leading
Republican presidential candidate, running on an immigration hard line platform, Republicans started to look at things in a
new light. If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even be talking about illegal immigration. When Trump won, DACA's fate seemed sealed. But even though he revoked lots of Obama’s
other executive orders on immigration, nearly 8 months into his term, he still hadn't ended DACA. A lot of the immigration hawks began
to go “wait, we were promised that you were gonna get rid of this amnesty that exists
right now, what the heck happened?” So a bunch of states threatened
to sue the government over DACA again if Trump didn’t get rid of it. Which brings us to early September, 2017 It is my duty to ensure that the laws of the United States are enforced and
that the constitutional order is upheld. It's a very stark message that leaves a whole lot of people, who only consider themselves to be Americans, in limbo for the next several months. In the five years it’s been around, DACA
has had a big impact on young undocumented immigrants. A survey of DACA recipients found nearly 70
percent got a job with better pay. More than 60 percent opened their first bank
account Nearly 65 percent bought their first car, and a similar share say they’ve pursued educational opportunities they previously couldn’t. But when these protections expire over the
coming weeks, months or years, they'll be back where they started before 2012 -- unable
to work legally and constantly at risk for deportation.