Montini: Will Trump hold dreamers hostage to get a border wall?

They are some of the most engaged and most productive young people in the country, and President Donald Trump may use them as bargaining chips to coerce Congress into spending taxpayer money on his border wall.

Several news operations have reported that staffers in the White House are advising Trump to use young people protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program as possible trade items to get funding for a wall and other concessions.

We call the young people "dreamers," because that is what they are.

They want is to live the American dream. It’s the only reality they know, and they live under the constant threat of it being taken away.

Give him the wall, he won't nix DACA

Former President Barack Obama issued an executive order that permits individuals who were illegally brought to the United States as children, and who don’t have serious criminal records, to seek temporary protection from deportation and renewable two-year work permits.

Arizona is said to have about 28,000 dreamers.

There are more than 800,000 in the nation.

Republican officials from 10 states say they’ll file a lawsuit against the administration unless Trump abolishes the DACA program. Those states are Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Idaho, Kansas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Nebraska and West Virginia.

But Trump’s advisers think he could use DACA to strike a deal with Congress, something along the lines of: If the House and Senate fund his wall he won’t abolish DACA.

We've invested a lot in dreamers

Outside the Phoenix convention center prior to Trump’s rally last week I spoke for a time to a young dreamer.

He was brought here as an infant, he said. He has siblings who are American born but he and his parents are not. He worries that his mother and father could be deported at any time, although they have lived and worked here peacefully for decades.

“A lot of those people over there,” he said, pointing to the line of Trump supporters waiting to get into the venue, “want to kick me out of the country. But it’s the only country I know.”

We’ve invested a lot in this young man and in all of the dreamers.

We’ve provided them with an education. We’ve infused them with a sense of gratitude for their life here. They want to work. To thrive. To give back.

Not just bargaining chips. Hostages

But the president wants his wall. And now his critics will say it is better to spend money on rebuilding Houston than building a wall. Which is true. Given that, and since he can’t get Mexico to pay for it, he could use dreamers as political bargaining chips.

Although, using young people as part of a negotiation that involves large sums of money doesn’t make them bargaining chips. It makes them hostages.

At one point while the young man and I were chatting a small group of those in the Trump line began chanting, “U.S.A.! U.S.A!"

The dreamer smiled, then said, “I bet I love the country more than they do.”

Or at least as much.

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