Trump says 'DREAMers' can 'rest easy' while he targets criminals for deportation

(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)

published 22 April 2017

President Trump told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that "DREAMers," young immigrants who were brought to America illegally as children, should not fear deportation because they are not being targeted. DREAMers can "rest easy," the president said, because his administration is "not after the DREAMers; we are after the criminals."

The DREAMer label comes from the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which has not passed at the federal level, despite repeated introductions in Congress since 2001, but is implemented in modified forms in some states.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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