President Donald Trump suggested February 5 that Congress faces a March 5 deadline for dealing with the 690,000 DACA illegals, even though the deadline has been vaporized by a California court.

“He should know there isn’t one [deadline], and that is not a secret” in the DACA dispute, said Jessica Vaughan, the policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, adding:

I don’t understand that at all, unless he is trying to set up a situation where it is to his political advantage to talk about a deadline to force the Democrats’ hand [in Congress] … But at this point, the deal that he is proposing does not have a critical mass of support because there is so much criticism of it from the immigration hawks as well the Democrats and the pro-amnesty Republicans.

Trump cited the non-existent deadline in a Tweet he posted after Democrats announced on Sunday they had rejected his four-part amnesty and immigration framework plan.

The Tweet is one of several recent occasions where Trump has claimed that the March 5 date is a deadline.

The March 5 deadline appeared in September when Attorney General Jeff Sessions admitted the illegality of former President Barack Obama’s DACA amnesty. Trump chose to wind down the DACA program by directing that the lower officials not extend the two-year work permits given to the DACA illegals.

Until the court decision, the work permits were expiring at a rate of roughly 100 per day, opening up 100 new jobs for Americans each day.

After March 5, the work permits were slated to expire at roughly 1,000 per day, so opening up 1,000 new jobs for Americans each day.

But that March 5 distinction was vaporized January 9 when a California judge decided that the government had violated regulatory procedures by quickly ending the delivery of benefits to the 680,000 illegals still in the DACA program. In response, the federal government has begun renewing the expiring work-permits, pending their appeal to the  Supreme Court, which is likely to be decided by June.

Even if the court decision was struck down, the March 5 deadline would only mark a more rapid expiration of work permits, not a sudden loss of work permits by the 690,000 illegals.

Moreover, Trump’s deputies have indicated they would not rush to repatriate the DACA illegals, so there is no particular repatriation deadline when the Supreme Court formally decides the DACA anesty was illegal.

Business groups have touted the March 5 deadline because they are rushing Congress to legally preserve the DACA program. They want the amnesty preserved to keep the 690,000 DACA people in the labor market, but also to deny Trump any political leverage that he could use to force Congress to accept a broader rewrite of immigration laws that would reduce the inflow of new workers and consumers each year.