The Post's View
Trump may be tilting toward compassion on ‘dreamers’
By Editorial Board
AN EARLY test of the Trump administration’s capacity for malice, or for constructive compassion, is its stance on “dreamers” — undocumented young immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and who were granted a temporary reprieve from the threat of deportation by President Barack Obama. On that score, in his earliest days in office, Mr. Trump is tilting, maybe, toward compassion.
Having spent most of the presidential campaign vowing to revoke what he called an unconstitutional “amnesty” (which it isn’t, since dreamers have been granted what amounts to a stay, not legal status), Mr. Trump switched gears after the election, saying he would “work something out” that would “make people happy and proud.” Now his spokesman, Sean Spicer, says the new president’s priority for deportation is “people who have done harm to our country,” not dreamers, whom Mr. Trump would approach “in a very humane way.” In other words, the focus will be on undocumented criminals, the same sub-group of illegal immigrants targeted by Mr. Obama’s deportation policy.
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