The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin and Jerry Markon report that the reason parents of "dreamer" children, who had been brought into the country illegally and had been granted temporary relief under the president’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, weren't included in President Obama's executive action protecting many immigrants from deportation is because " lawyers from the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the White House examined the legal arguments and decided against it." The reasons the governmental lawyers gave for not including parents of "dreamers" were: "First, even though DACA recipients are not being deported at the moment, 'they unquestionably lack lawful status in the United States.' Second, doing so 'would represent a significant departure from deferred action programs that Congress has implicitly approved in the past.'"
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
