Senate will not take up DACA bill this month, says Sen. John Cornyn

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) told media on Monday that the Senate is not considering immigration bill on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program during the year-end legislation, Reuters reported.

If the March deadline is not met, Cornyn said, President Trump may consider extending the deadline.

“The president has given us enough time to deal with this before March and so I think that’s plenty of time and I expect us to meet it,” Cornyn said. “If we can’t, then the president could extend the deadline if he chose to do so. But this is something we’re going to turn to, I’m sure, in January.”

Trump’s hard stand on DACA beneficiaries has made it a contentious issue between Democrats and Republicans. During the 2016 Presidential Election Trump had announced that he will rescind the Obama-era program. In September, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the agency will only adjudicate “DACA renewal requests received by October 5, 2017, from current beneficiaries whose benefits will expire between September 5, 2017 and March 5, 2018.”

“On Sept. 5, 2017, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiated the orderly phase out of the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA),” USCIS said while announcing the discontinuation of the program. “DHS will provide a limited, six-month window during which it will consider certain requests for DACA and applications for work authorization, under specific parameters.”

Reportedly, advocates for a permanent fix on the legal status of the DACA beneficiaries are giving buttons to lawmakers with the mark “122,” denoting the number of individuals who are losing their legal status every day due to discontinuation of the program.

On the National Mall, huge monitors have been put that show videos of those affected pleading for help. Reuters reported that Rep. John Carter (R-TX) has expressed concern that Democrats want to “go way beyond the scope of DACA and the approximately 800,000 Dreamers who at one time or another were covered by Democratic former President Barack Obama’s executive order.”