Now what for Dreamers?

Remember that 800,000 people voluntarily gave their personal information to the government with the assurance that it was confidential and would not be disclosed to other agencies:

Applicants gave that information with the assurance that it would not be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Enforcement, the agencies that otherwise would be charged with deporting them. As the Citizenship and Immigration Services’ own guidance states, “information provided in this request is protected from disclosure to ICE or C.B.P.,” unless the applicant commits a crime or poses a national security threat.

Dreamers divulged information to the government, expecting that their information would not be shared. The information includes not only potentially incriminating information like date of initial entry and length of stay in the United States, but also details like their names, addresses, school information and Social Security numbers — precisely what the government needs to locate and detain them quickly.

Anybody taking any bets that the people Trump has put in charge of the Citizenship and Immigration Services won’t be heavily pressured to pass that data along to the enforcement people at ICE or CBP despite that guidance?

Also, there are big loopholes in the six-month “window” AG Sessions begrudgingly announced today.

those whose DACA status is set to expire during the next six months can renew their status, which lasts two years. But that last bullet point, while cryptically worded, means that those whose status expires after the six-month cutoff cannot renew it. (DACA status lasts two years from the date of implementation, and recipients have been renewing their status after expiration. Because people have been signing up on varying dates over time, their two-year statuses have been expiring in rolling intervals over time, too.) The group whose status expires in the next six months can renew one more time for two more years. But those whose status expires after the six-month deadline cannot. When their status expires, their work permits and protections from deportation are gone.

I hope no one is fooled by Sessions’ mealy-mouthed whine that DACA is executive overreach and unconstitutional; he was a consistent vote against relaxed immigration law every time it came up in the Senate while he was there. He is, as my friend and now-deceased Alabama blogger Mac Thomason often called him, an evil little troll.