John Kelly dismisses some DREAMers as 'too lazy to get off their asses'

John Kelly.
(Image credit: Zach Gibson-Pool/Getty Images)

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly claimed Tuesday that some DREAMers are "too lazy to get off their asses" and register for government protections. Kelly's remarks came as he was asked about immigration legislation proposed by President Trump that would create a path to citizenship for DREAMers — young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children — in exchange for funding for his Mexico border wall.

Kelly said that if anything, Trump's proposed immigration deal was actually pretty radical: "[A path to citizenship is] beyond what anyone could have imagined, where you're on the right or the left." Politico also reported that Kelly thought it unlikely that Trump would extend the March 5 deadline to offer protections to DACA recipients, should Congress fail to pass immigration reform. "I'm not so sure the president ... has the authority to extend it," Kelly said, citing the Trump administration's belief that President Obama's DACA policy was unconstitutional. He added: "I would certainly advise against it."

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The Associated Press reports that Kelly did, however, assure reporters that DACA recipients "[would not be] a priority for deportation" if Congress is unable to come to an agreement on immigration reform.

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Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.