Tim Cook Speaks Out Against Trump’s Decision to End DACA

Update (11:40 a.m. ET): President Trump ordered an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and told Congress to replace the initiative with legislation before it expires in March 2018.

President Donald Trump is expected to announce Tuesday the end of an Obama-era program that protects children of undocumented immigrants from deportation, but he may include a six-month delay, according to The New York Times.

The delay would give Congress time to pass legislation that addresses the status of the estimated 800,000 immigrants covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or the DACA program. The initiative allows people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children to stay and work in the country, as long as they entered before the age of 16, lived in the U.S. continuously since June 2007, and have committed no serious crimes.

Silicon Valley executives ramped up their support of the so-called Dreamers last week when Trump was expected to make his announcement. Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg urged Trump to reconsider in a Facebook post and changed his profile picture on Sunday to one that said, “I support DACA.” Additionally, Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted about the impact ending DACA would have on his company.

250 of my Apple coworkers are #Dreamers. I stand with them. They deserve our respect as equals and a solution rooted in American values.

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) September 3, 2017

What’s more, American business leaders like Warren Buffett, Meg Whitman, Neil Blumenthal and more than 400 others signed a letter to the president imploring him not to end DACA. The letter, titled an “Open Letter From Leaders of American Industry,” was published by the immigrant reform group Fwd.us., which was co-founded by Zuckerberg.

If Trump does repeal DACA, the nation’s gross domestic product would be $105 billion less than it would be if the program remained, Moody’s Analytics chief economic Mark Zandi told The New York Times.

“The Dreamers are on track to be a highly educated group, and losing them will be a significant blow to businesses already struggling to find educated and skilled young workers,” Zandi told the Times.