Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is scheduled to appear Monday with other mayors from around the world at a summit in New York City where he will discuss his support for an Obama-era program that is shielding nearly 800,000 young immigrants from deportation.
Reed supports Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the program the Trump administration plans to phase out in six months. At the Global Mayors Summit, Reed will also highlight the city’s Welcoming Atlanta program, which promotes inclusiveness. The summit is being supported by the Open Society Foundations, established by billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a major backer of liberal causes.
Reed recently condemned Trump's decision to cancel DACA. As of March, the program has provided work permits and deportation deferrals to 24,135 young immigrants in Georgia.
"Eliminating DACA is a shameful abdication of moral leadership," Reed said. "By ending this program, the president is breaking a promise that the federal government made to the nearly 800,000 young people in our country who stepped forward, passed background checks and have been granted permission to live and work legally in the United States."
RELATED: Fifteen states sue to block Trump’s cancellation of DACA
Trump, who met with Democratic leaders in Congress this week to chart a way forward, criticized Obama’s actions in creating the DACA program. He and other Republican critics have described it as an illegal end-run around Congress.
“We must also recognize that we are nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws,” he said in a prepared statement last week. “The legislative branch, not the executive branch, writes these laws – this is the bedrock of our constitutional system, which I took a solemn oath to preserve, protect, and defend.”
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