Sens. John McCain, Jeff Flake OK with deporting criminals, but want to help 'dreamers'

WASHINGTON — Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake seem fine with the Trump administration's emphasis on aggressively deporting criminal undocumented immigrants but also want to focus on resolving the dilemma of the "dreamers."

President Donald Trump's Homeland Security Department has said that the young immigrants brought as children to the United States without authorization — and protected by former President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — are not targets of the stepped-up deportation effort.

McCain and Flake, both Arizona Republicans, expressed sympathy and would like Congress to address their status.

"If there are people who have committed crimes that are in the United States of America illegally, we all want them gone," McCain said earlier this month when asked about the more aggressive direction on deportations. "That's just a given. ... I think even the most ardent supporter of immigration does not want people in this country who have committed crimes."

But when it comes to addressing the "dreamers," McCain said: "This is the kind of issue that I think needs to be debated."

Trump's deportation strategy is detailed in Homeland Security memos released Tuesday. The memos have caused alarm in the immigrant community because, while the main focus is undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, all immigrants in the country without authorization remain subject to arrest and possible deportation. There also is fear that, in addition to those accused of major crimes, the administration will go after immigrants who have had less serious run-ins with the law.

McCain has not yet commented specifically on the memos; The Arizona Republic's efforts to seek comment from him on Friday were unsuccessful.

Flake told The Republic that Trump's immigration plan doesn't give him heartburn so long as the emphasis is on "deporting criminal aliens" because "that's what we've been calling for."

"It's just a symptom of a broken immigration system that we've had for a long time," Flake said Friday of the Homeland Security memos. "If they're prioritizing, as they say, and as the (Trump) order states, it's not much different than what was done during the Obama administration. In practice, it may turn out different, but it's a symptom of a system that needs reform badly."

Flake is supporting legislation that would put the dreamer protections into law in case DACA is eliminated. Obama created the DACA program without Congress via executive action, and Republicans have complained it was an example of executive outreach. Flake has his own bill that would extend deportation protections to dreamers for three years while at the same time tightening enforcement on criminal undocumented immigrants in the country.

Action by Congress is needed soon, Flake said, because many DACA participants are going to be timed out of the program and will lose their work permits.

"It has to be Congress, because we've all maintained that the president doesn't have the authority to take that kind of action," Flake said. "We're ready to work with the president on that."

McCain and Flake helped write the most recent Senate-passed comprehensive immigration reform bill, which the House of Representatives refused to consider in 2013.

The bipartisan legislation, known as the "Gang of Eight" bill, would have balanced a massive investment in border security with a modernized visa system for future foreign workers as well as a pathway to citizenship for many of the undocumented immigrants who have already settled in the country.

"If we had passed comprehensive immigration reform, which was never brought up in the House of Representatives, all of these issues would have been behind us by now, in my view," McCain said. "Because we would have had things like E-Verify. We would have had people who had to have valid documentation that they were in this country legally or they couldn't get a job. There was so much of this issue that could have been resolved by comprehensive immigration reform, in my view."

Flake said he believes a comprehensive immigration reform revival is unlikely in the current political climate, but that some elements of the old bill may be resurrected.

"There are some things that are going to be forced on the administration," Flake said earlier this month in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. "One of them is DACA. Nobody really wants to deport these kids. I don't think the president does; we certainly don't."

Nowicki is The Republic's national political reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @dannowicki and on his official Facebook page.