WASHINGTON — After months of delays, President Donald Trump is expected to decide soon on the fate of so called “dreamers” who were brought into the country illegally as children.

Advocates on both sides of the issue are bracing for the possibility that Trump will halt the issuance of new work permits under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, a move that would effectively phase out a program that gave hundreds of thousands of young people a reprieve from deportation and the ability to work legally in the U.S.

The deliberations come as Trump has been under fire for his response to a white supremacists’ protest in Charlottesville, Va., and his pardon of Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, who had been found guilty of defying a judge’s order to stop racially profiling Latinos.

Trump has wavered back and forth on his plans for DACA, which he slammed during his campaign as “illegal amnesty.” Since taking office, however, he has softened his stance, at one point saying so-called dreamers could “rest easy.”

His administration, Trump said back in April, was “not after the dreamers, we are after the criminals.” All the while, the Department of Homeland Security has continued to grant two-year, renewable DACA work permits, to the dismay of immigration hard-liners.

But now, Trump is under pressure to make a final call: His administration is facing a Sept. 5 deadline set by a group of Republican state lawmakers, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The group, which successfully halted an Obama-era program that would have protected certain parents living in the country illegally, threatened to take on DACA if the administration does not rescind the order and stop issuing work permits by their deadline,

Continuing to process work permits is one thing; defending a program Trump called illegal in court is another. And many, including Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly, the former head of DHS, believe that DACA is on dubious legal footing and would not stand up in court.

The president has several options. He could order DHS to halt the issuance of new DACA work permits and call on Congress to come up with a legislative fix. There have been conversations among lawmakers about ways to grandfather current DACA recipients, and such a measure could become part of the horse-trading over the budget when Congress returns from August recess.