US senators draft bill to prevent deportation of minors under Donald Trump rule

Immigrants from El Salvador and Guatemala who entered the US illegally board a bus after they were released from a family detention center in San Antonio. (File photo)

Republican and Democratic members of the US Senate are working on a bill aimed at showing leniency to undocumented immigrant minors under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has already thrown his support behind mass deportations.

According to reports published on Thursday, the legislation is intended to prevent the children of undocumented immigrants living in the US from being deported if they grew up in the country without any criminal record. 

The move was prompted as Trump, a staunch supporter of mass deportation, has already pledged to repeal executive orders by outgoing President Barack Obama that halted deportations of young immigrants, as well as the parents of citizens and permanent residents.

The lawmakers expressed concern that cancellation of Obama’s executive actions would affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people whose parents had immigrated to the US illegally.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (Photo by AFP)

"If you take the 740,000 people that identified themselves as being illegal, and you ruin their lives, you're not helping fix immigration,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said.

“I can't live with myself as a United States senator to support legislation that would take 740,000 people that voluntarily came forward and throw them to the wolves. The right way is to repeal the executive order and have congress finally get this right,” he added.

"Secure our border, control who gets a job, increase legal immigration, deport crooks and felons, and understand there is a difference between a grandmother and a drug dealer," Graham concluded.

Backing the Thursday bill, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer also argued that Trump’s plan to rescind an executive order could create a crisis.

“I think we’ll have a lot if President Trump says this is a good solution to a hard problem,” he said, adding that, “Here’s what you got to ask Republicans and Democrats, What do you do with these kids?”

“You can’t blame these kids for coming here, you can’t blame these kids for coming out of the shadows. They’re out of the shadows and now we know who they are. If we cancel the executive order, what happens to them? We deport them all?” Schumer asked. 

"They came here as minors, now they have grown up in America. They have no other country to go back to," he noted.

US President-elect Donald Trump (Photo by AFP)

Approximately 11.3 million undocumented immigrants were living in the US in 2014 and undocumented immigrants from Mexico made up the largest share of this population, according to government data.

Trump vowed to show "no amnesty" for undocumented migrants living in the country and promised to build an "impenetrable" wall on the US-Mexican border if elected president.

Trump’s campaign for the presidency had been hit with many controversies since its inception in early 2015. He made several controversial remarks, including a call to ban all Muslims from coming to America as well as forced deportation of Mexican migrants by building a 2,000-mile wall along the US-Mexico border.

He has also sought a database to track Muslims across the United States and said that the US would have "absolutely no choice" but to close down mosques.

Trump’s proposal has been condemned by Muslims and human rights groups as well as his Democratic rivals and many of his Republican proponents, who describe the proposal as divisive, counterproductive and contrary to American values.