When President Obama strode into the Rose Garden 10 years ago Wednesday to announce the DACA program, he knew it was momentous. But he couldn’t have predicted just how much change it would bring.
After repeatedly saying he didn’t have the power to carve entire categories of illegal immigrants out of danger of deportation, he reversed himself amid his 2012 re-election campaign and decided that he did, in fact, have the power.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, was the result. It granted a stay of deportation and extended work permits to young adult illegal immigrants who’d come to the U.