Politico reports that President Trump has decided to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, “the Obama-era program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as children.”

Senior White House aides “huddled Sunday afternoon to discuss the rollout of a decision likely to ignite a political firestorm — and fulfill one of the president’s core campaign promises,” Politico reported.

“In a nod to reservations held by many lawmakers, the White House plans to delay the enforcement of the president’s decision for six months, giving Congress a window to act, according to one White House official,” the political news service reported.

Measures intended to stop migrants from trying to cross the Mediterranean “were at the center of discussions among four European leaders who met in Paris with the leaders of three African countries” on Aug. 28, reports the New York Times.

The Guardian reported that seven African and European leaders met in Paris “to try to build a new relationship aimed at cutting migration into Europe from northern Africa in return for aid.”

The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Spain on Aug. 28 “agreed to help Chad and Niger with border control to stem the flow of migrants through Libya and across the Mediterranean,” the United Kingdom-based newspaper reported.

Under the headline, “EU, African states map (blurry) approach to migration crisis,” Politico Europe cast the meeting this way in its lead: “The EU and Africa took a few small steps forward, if that, to tackle the refugee crisis.”

European countries “are at odds over how to manage continuing migration inflows that leave states like Italy and Germany shouldering much of the burden for the bloc, while eastern and central states refuse to take in new arrivals,” Politico Europe reported.

AS a growing chorus of Republican Party members urge President Trump not to scrap the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the White House indicated a final decision from Trump will be announced Tuesday.

Trump is expected to announce Tuesday “that he has decided to end the 2012 program implemented by President Obama that has deferred deportations for people who came to the U.S. undocumented as children, CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett reports,” CBS News reported on its website.

Several administration officials said that Trump “is likely to phase out the program, but his advisers have engaged in a vigorous behind-the-scenes debate over precisely how to do so. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no decision was final, also cautioned that the president was conflicted about the issue and could suddenly change his mind,” writes Julie Davis in the New York Times.

GOP leaders urge Trump to retain DACA

Meanwhile, several Republican lawmakers and governors are urging Trump to retain DACA.

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Friday “gave a major boost to legislative efforts to preserve protections for young undocumented immigrants — and urged President Donald Trump to not tear up the program,” reports CNN.

The Washington Post reported that “the late-stage opposition from some top Republicans — as well as from hundreds of major corporations such as Facebook, Google and Apple — has raised the pressure on Trump to preserve it.”

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III, a Republican, in June “signed a letter demanding that President Donald Trump end DACA, a program that allows undocumented individuals brought to the United States as children to live and work here legally,” notes Slate.

Slatery has now done a 180 on DACA. On Friday, Slatery “publicly withdrew his demand and instead urged Trump to keep DACA—and to work with Congress to protect young undocumented immigrants,” Slate reported.

Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott “urged President Donald Trump on Friday not to summarily end an Obama-era program that protects from deportation immigrants brought into the country illegally as children,” the Miami Herald reported.

President Trump is considering ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, “the Obama-era policy that shields some illegal immigrants from deportation, before conservative state attorneys general file a court challenge to the program,” writes Jonathan Swan in Axios.

“Hard-liners in the Trump administration appear to be trying to pressure President Trump to stop an Obama-era program that has granted work permits to thousand of people who entered the country illegally as children,” reported Brian Bennett in the Los Angeles Times.

Bennett reported that officials last week “met to prepare options for Trump that range from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program immediately to phasing it out by ending renewals of the two-year work permits, allowing them to expire over time.”

Trump vowed to end DACA during his campaign last year. “But he has refused since January to sign a draft executive order to halt the program,” wrote Bennett.

The deferred-action program protects more than 750,000 people, known as Dreamers, from being deported, the article noted.

In a press release, the National Immigration Forum noted that six Republican members of Congress from California, Florida, Nebraska and New York on Aug. 22 sent a letter to Trump urging the administration to keep DACA in place “until we can pass a permanent legislative solution,” citing DACA recipients’ economic contributions and the threat posed by diverting enforcement resources toward people with deferred status.

“In addition, conservative faith, law enforcement and business leaders around the country spoke in support after last month’s bipartisan introduction of the DREAM Act in the Senate and House. “We must find a way forward for these young people, who are American in everything but paperwork,” two Texas evangelical pastors wrote earlier in July,” the forum noted.

A bigger legislative deal in the works?

But the White House may actually retain DACA as part of a broader immigration deal on Capitol Hill, writes McClatchy’s Anita Kumar.

“Donald Trump’s top aides are pushing him to protect young people brought into the country illegally as children — and then use the issue as a bargaining chip for a larger immigration deal — despite the president’s campaign vow to deport so-called Dreamers,” she wrote in an Aug. 22 article.

Kumar reports that the White House officials “want Trump to strike an ambitious deal with Congress that offers Dreamers protection in exchange for legislation that pays for a border wall and more detention facilities, curbs legal immigration and implements E-verify, an online system that allows businesses to check immigration status.”

Enacted legislation related to immigration increased in the first half of 2017 by 90 percent to 133 laws compared with 70 laws in 2016, according to a new report from the National Conference of State Legislatures. The number of resolutions increased by 22 percent to 195 from 159. Lawmakers in 47 states enacted 133 laws and 195 resolutions related to immigration, for a total of 328, the NCSL Immigration Policy Project reported. The report covers state legislative activity from January through June 2017.

California and San Francisco officials said on Aug. 14 that they are suing the Trump administration, “alleging federal threats to withhold funding from ‘sanctuary cities’ are unconstitutional and violate the rights of residents,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

This is the second time that the city of San Francisco has taken legal action against the Trump administration over the policy, notes the San Francisco Examiner in an Aug. 14 story.

The recent moves by California and San Francisco follow on the heels of similar action by the city of Chicago.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel “has taken his fight against President Trump’s immigration policies to court,” write Michael Tarm and Sophia Tareen of the Associated Press.

Tarm and Tareen report that Chicago became one of the first cities “to sue the government over what many U.S. cities argue are illegal bids to withhold public safety grants from so-called sanctuary cities.”

In related news, “For the first time since it began extending the detentions of local inmates sought for deportation, Miami-Dade County received word from Washington that it won’t be treated as a community giving “sanctuary” to immigration violators,” writes Douglas Hanks in the Miami Herald.

Hanks reports that An Aug. 4 letter to Mayor Carlos Gimenez from the Justice Department said “there was no evidence” Miami-Dade was out of compliance with an immigration provision of a federal police grant worth about $480,000 this year to the county.

Click here for the full letter.

The Canadian military is building a camp to house the growing number of refugees crossing the US border, BBC News reported on Aug. 9.

“The camp would house up to 500 asylum seekers in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, near Plattsburgh, New York,” the BBC report said.

The construction begins about a week after Montreal turned its Olympic Stadium into a shelter for refugees arriving from the US, the BBC reported.

I recently wrote about a recent New York Times article that detailed the perils facing refugees trying to enter Canada from the U.S.

Writing in the New York Times, Francis Clines describes how immigration lawyer Glenn Formica’s views on immigrants seeking sanctuary in churches have changed in the Trump era (New York Times, Aug. 4, 2017).

The New York Times Arts section recently included an interesting article about a number of children’s books that focus on refugees.

“More than a dozen new and forthcoming titles feature young Muslim refugees as protagonists, ranging from picture books aimed at readers as young as 4 to a cluster of novels for middle and high school students that delve into the murkier aspects of the refugee crisis,” writes New York Times reporter Alexandra Alter.

Click here for the article (NY Times, Aug. 7, 2017).