A Notorious Camera Hog Goes All Shy and Stuff

Donald Trump has never been one to avoid the camera ... until today. He won't personally announce his decision to sort-of, kinda end President Obama's "dreamers" program, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Trump himself won't face the cameras to announce his non-decision decision. He's sending out immigration hard-liner Jeff Sessions to make the announcement (and Sessions has already signaled that he'll take no questions -- how's that for standing proud behind your administration's decision to quash the dreams of some 800,000 otherwise productive members of this society?).

Non-decision decision? Trump will say he's ending the DACA program but has really decided to punt the whole question over to Congress for the next six months. Congress? Is he serious? Congress has never demonstrated any aptitude nor willingness to solve the problem of children brought to this country illegally who have subsequently made productive lives for themselves and rich contributions to the communities in which they live. The stories are now multiplying about "dreamers" who've been helping to pull people out of the Houston flood waters.

Dreamers like the undocumented daughter of some of Virginia Foxx's long-time servants, a young woman who reportedly graduated with honors from Watauga High School years ago and then had trouble finding a place in college because of her undocumented status. Did Virginia Foxx help her? No, at least according to people who know that situation.

Trump is purely playing to his alt-white base, and he should hide his face.

“It’s not clear what delaying this for six months means,” said Mark Krikorian, another immigration hard-liner who runs the Center for Immigration Studies.

“He’s being pulled in a bunch of different directions, and because he doesn’t have any strong ideological anchor, or deep knowledge of the issue, he ends up sort of not knowing what to do,” Mr. Krikorian said. “I think the fact that they did nothing to [DACA] suggests that they had no idea what to do,” he added.

The cruelest part of this: The federal government has the cellphone and home address of every DACA recipient, information they volunteered to the government with the promise it would never be used against them or their families. That was part of President Obama's original executive order.

“They grew up here, they work at nearly every major company in America, serve in the military and many are working on recovery efforts in Texas,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a progressive immigration reform group that has urged the president to retain the program. “If DACA is repealed and no permanent legislation passed, they will all be fired and our government will begin the large-scale deportation of people raised in the United States.”

Does Trump want that as his legacy? Does the Republican Congress?