The ball is in your court, Luis.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., accused White House chief of staff John Kelly of lying about his desire to protect children brought into the country illegally from deportation.
“General Kelly is a hypocrite who is a disgrace to the uniform he used to wear,” Gutierrez said Tuesday.
Gutierrez based that denunciation on Kelly’s past support for DACA, a program that former President Barack Obama established to confer the benefits of legal migration on people who were brought to the country as children. President Trump announced Tuesday that he would phase out the program, which most Republicans regard as an unconstitutional, but he urged lawmakers to provide a legislative fix.
“I have a great heart for these folks we’re talking about, a great love for them, and people think in terms of children but they’re really young adults,” Trump said Tuesday. “I have a love for these people and hopefully now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly.”
That’s consistent with the views that Kelly outlined during a private meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in July. He endorsed the goals program, but echoed the idea that Obama’s procedure for establishing it was unconstitutional. “He’s personally for it,” Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, said after the meeting, per the Los Angeles Times. “He thinks it will not hold up [in court], according to the attorneys he’s spoken with.”