On Thursday night during a CNN town hall, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was asked by an undocumented mother if he thought that she and others should be deported. This is a clip of what Ryan told Angelica Villalobos:
“No, no, Angelica,” Ryan said. “I can see that you love your daughter and you’re a nice person who has a great future ahead of you, and I hope your future’s here.”
Later in the video, Ryan said this: “And so what we have to do is find a way to make sure that you can get right with the law, and we got to do this in a good way, so that the rug doesn’t get pulled out from under you and your family gets separated. That’s the way we feel, and that is exactly what our new incoming President has stated he wants to do.”
He also added, “So have have to figure out how to fix this, but to do that, people need to have confidence that our laws are being followed, and that we actually know who’s coming and going, and that we actually have a secure border…. We’ve got to make sure that these laws are being enforced, that we are controlling our borders so violent criminals, repeat offenders, don’t come back and do these kinds of horrific things. We’ve got a drug problem. We’ve got a lot of problems. We want to able to secure our border. When people get confidence in this country that our border is secured, that our laws are being enforced, then I really believe the country, all people in the country, will be in a much better position to fix these thornier, bigger problems. But if you’re worried about some deportation force knocking on your door this year, don’t worry about that.”
After Ryan gave his answer, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Ryan the following: “For those who don’t know, DACA is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It’s an executive action that President Obama took, granting legal status for individuals like Angelica, if President-elect Trump wants to undo DACA, you would tell him, ‘don’t do it.'” (FYI, Tapper’s description of DACA is not accurate. It does not offer legal status to recipients. According to the federal government, ” Deferred action is a use of prosecutorial discretion to defer removal action against an individual for a certain period of time. Deferred action does not provide lawful status.”)
“Well, I think we have to come up with a solution for the DACA kids, and that’s something we in Congress and the Trump transition team are working on.” Ryan said. “What’s a good humane solution?”
