Trump’s Misleading DACA Boast
President Donald Trump boasted in his State of the Union address that his legislative proposal to make the DACA program permanent will “generously” cover 1.8 million people — “almost three times more people than the previous administration covered.” That’s a faulty and misleading comparison.
The 1.8 million figure represents the number of people that the White House claims could be eligible for Trump’s proposed program. That’s about the same number as those who are potentially eligible under the current Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which then-President Barack Obama created by executive action in 2012.
In addition, we cannot verify how many people would actually be eligible under Trump’s plan, because the White House has yet to release any details about the eligibility requirements in the proposal.
Before we lay out what we know about Trump’s proposal and how it compares to Obama’s program, let’s take a step back to
