It’s the latest move by state legislators to push back against the immigration policies of President Donald Trump. Attorneys behind the effort say it will reassure parents and prevent their children from becoming wards of the state.
“It’s emergency family planning. That’s what we were trying to provide people,” said Cam Crockett, an attorney in Bethesda.
Some 90,000 children of undocumented immigrants lived in Maryland between 2009 and 2013, the most recent years available in a report by the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute in Washington. That was about 7 percent of all Maryland children at the time. About three-quarters of them, or 67,000 children, are U.S. citizens, according to the report, “A Profile of U.S. Children with Unauthorized Immigrant Parents.”
Last year, the Trump administration moved to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Known as DACA, the program shields from deportation young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children. But courts around the country have ruled the administration's reasoning was wrong and kept the program in place. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to consider the matter in 2019.
