At LAT, "Yes, Trump can boost deportations and gut the Dreamer program for young immigrants":
As president, Donald Trump can move swiftly to gut President Obama’s signature immigration policies by ramping up deportations and ending a program that has given temporary work permits to immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.
Nearly a third of the 742,000 so-called Dreamers — those given protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — live in California and are potentially at risk of losing legal status.
Using the same executive authority that Obama claimed to create DACA and other initiatives, Trump also can quickly fulfill his promises to severely restrict the number of refugees admitted each year and to effectively bar visitors from countries with large Muslim populations.
Trump said Thursday, after meeting with Obama at the White House and Congressional leaders on Capitol Hill, that immigration and border security would be among his top priorities when he takes office in January.
“People will be really, really happy,” he said. Asked if he would work with Congress to ban Muslim immigrants, Trump walked away without answering.
Trump’s aides have begun drafting instructions that he can issue on his first day in office for the nation’s 5,000 deportation officers to begin rounding up more people for removals, according to two advisors to his transition team.
“There is vast potential to increase the level of deportations without adding personnel,” said Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and a member of Trump’s immigration policy transition team.
By giving more authority to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Trump easily could boost deportations by more than 75% in his first year in office, Kobach said.
That would meet the record set in 2012, at the end of Obama’s first term, when more than 400,000 people were deported. It fell to 235,00 last year after illegal immigration fell, and after agents were ordered to focus first on deporting criminals, repeat immigration violators and recent arrivals.
Under Trump, Kobach said, agents likely will return to raiding workplaces and checking workers’ status. That practice roiled immigrant communities in the final two years of George W. Bush’s presidency and was stopped when Obama came to office.
Trump may find it far more difficult to fulfill other prominent promises, however. They include building a tall wall along the entire border with Mexico and deporting millions more people.
Both proposals would require major appropriations from a Republican-led Congress that wants to cut spending, not increase it. It would require hammering out deals with Democrats who fiercely opposed Trump’s proposals on the campaign trail.
Trump has said the wall could cost up to $12 billion to build. An analysis published by MIT Technology Review estimated the cost at $38 billion, nearly the entire annual budget for the 22 federal agencies in the Department of Homeland Security...
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