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Young immigrants won't 'rest easy'

HOUSTON — Young immigrants protected by executive action from deportation say they won’t “rest easy,” even if President Donald Trump says they should.

Several “dreamers” told The Associated Press on Friday that they were not comforted by Trump’s pledge, in an AP interview, that he wouldn’t target the almost 800,000 people brought to the U.S. as children and living in the country illegally under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program enacted by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Trump told the AP that his administration is “not after the ‘dreamers,’ we are after the criminals.”

“Here is what they can hear: The ‘dreamers’ should rest easy,” Trump said. “OK? I’ll give you that.”

It was Trump’s latest statement expressing support for immigrants in the program, even as his administration broadly cracks down on illegal immigration. U.S. officials have promised to speed up and widen deportations, and threatened local governments that don’t cooperate with federal immigration agents.

“Obviously actions speak louder than words,” said Saba Nafees, a 24-year-old ‘dreamer’ who is a graduate student at Texas Tech University. “His actions are pretty terrifying.”

Juan Escalante, a 28-year-old who came to the U.S. from Venezuela at age 11, said he was “not comforted by the president’s words.”

“He has said he will treat us with ‘heart’ and to ‘rest easy,’ and it just seems so general,” Escalante said.

Some young immigrants pointed to the case of Juan Manuel Montes, a 23-year-old whose attorneys say is the first person enrolled in the DACA program to be deported. Federal authorities said this week that Montes had violated the conditions of the program.

The program granted work authorization to certain immigrants brought to the U.S. before their 16th birthday. The young people who benefit are called `dreamers’ because the program mimics versions of the so-called DREAM Act, which would have provided legal status for young immigrants but was never passed by Congress.

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