President-elect Donald Trump pledged to "work something out" with undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children and subsequently signed up for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
"We're going to work something out that's going to make people happy and proud," he said of DREAMers in an interview with Time magazine, which recently named him their Person of the Year.
"They got brought here at a very young age. They've worked here. They've gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they're in never-never land, because they don't know what's going to happen."
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel delivered a letter to Trump on behalf of 17 mayors, calling on the president-elect to continue the program started under President Barack Obama.
"I delivered to the president-elect, his senior adviser, and his chief of staff a letter signed by [17] mayors, put together from across the country, about our DACA students and that they were working hard toward the American dream," Emanuel told reporters Wednesday, after meeting with Trump at his Manhattan headquarters in Trump Tower, CBS News reported.
Emanuel tweeted the text of the letter from his official Twitter account later Wednesday morning.
"We urge you to exercise your Constitutional authority to provide pardons to DREAMers both retroactively and prospectively," the letter read.
"We ask your administration to continue to accept and adjudicate initial applications and renewals for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) until Congress modernizes our immigration system and provides a more permanent form of relief for these individuals," the letter continued.
"Ending DACA would disrupt the lives of close to one million young people, and it would disrupt the sectors of the American economy, as well as our national security and public safety, to which they contribute."
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