Last Friday, President Obama announced that he will halt deportation proceedings for some DREAM-eligible youth and allow them to apply for work authorization. This announcement was met with a mix of relief and optimism from those in the immigrant rights community. Predictably, the anti-immigrant crowd is in an uproar over the Administration’s new policy and responded with conspiracy theories, calls for Obama’s impeachment and accusations of treason.

Although providing relief to DREAM youth is a move supported by the majority of Americans, the anti-immigrant movement used the announcement as an opportunity to inflame its core base of far-right extremists.

National anti-immigrant groups, many of which have ties to white nationalism and anti-Semitism, responded swiftly and vehemently to the announcement. Dan Stein of the anti-immigrant group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) a group founded by white nationalist John Tanton stated, “This is a blatant abuse of executive power that ignores the will of Congress and the American people. The Obama administration is engaging in a shameless display of political pandering to satisfy a narrow slice of its party.”

Mark Krikorian, a noted Islamophobe and head of the nativist Center for Immigration Studies stated, “Any DREAM Act supporter who applauds this measure has forfeited any right to complain about future usurpation of the Constitution. Even backers of DREAM in Congress have a responsibility to deny funding to DHS to carry out this policy.”

NumbersUSA, the grassroots organizer of the anti-immigrant network stated, “Yes, the President has created one humdinger of a fraud machine now. And we thought that he couldn’t top ‘prosecutorial discretion.’ Ha!”

The anti-immigrant state groups had the most aggressive tone to their responses to the announcement. A spokesperson for the Georgia-based anti-immigrant group Dustin Inman Society called stated, “It is treason. The president of the United States swears an oath to enforce the laws of this country and he has not even done that. He has not even enforced the immigration laws we have on the books.”

The leader of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement called the policy change an “atrocity.”

The anti-immigrant coalition So-Cal Patriots sent around an email stating, “The ‘Commander in Chief’ has now fully crawled into bed with law-breakers and Mexican organized crime. The word “impeachment” is already being thrown around. The word ‘prison’ is probably more appropriate. This is an illegal, criminal act by a rogue, desperate dictator, period.”

FULL ARTICLE HERE: Anti-Immigrant Leaders Call Obama Policy “Treasonous” | IMAGINE 2050.