President Donald Trump has to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program now or he faces political and legal consequences, according to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
"The legal question isn't even a close one. You've already had multiple courts say that a similar amnesty that came a few years after DACA was completely illegal," Kobach, a Republican, said Friday, according to The Washington Times. "It's a loser. And the president, if he were to continue DACA, would lose in court and politically."
He added, "It would be a very bad political construction because his base would be cheering against him when his administration loses."
Trump has been weighing an end to the program, which grants amnesty to undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as children, but has expressed support for a gradual phase-out or even keeping parts of it.
"There is a way the president can do it that does show some compassion for the situation of these people and that is to simply allow them to expire. And so a person who got a DACA amnesty yesterday has two years to live and work in the United States. Allow that person's amnesty, illegal though it is, to continue for two years," Kobach suggested.