EXCLUSIVE – Kris Kobach: ‘Tying DACA Amnesty to Tax Cuts Is the Ultimate Bad Deal-Making’

A potential plan by President Trump’s administration to trade amnesty for nearly 800,000 illegal aliens for tax cuts “is the ultimate bad deal-making,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told Breitbart News exclusively Tuesday evening.

For the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens shielded by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which Trump will officially end, White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short – a former Koch brothers executive – hinted that the administration will accept a clean, amnesty bill from Congress that would not only legalize DACA recipients, but also create a surge at the U.S.-Mexico border and a surge in legal immigration to the U.S.

Kobach, an immigration expert who has previously met with Trump on plans to end illegal immigration, told Breitbart News that he was stunned by Short’s pro-amnesty comments.

“Tying DACA to tax cuts is the ultimate bad deal-making,” Kobach said. “I cannot believe President Trump would ever agree to such an obvious bad deal.”

Kobach described the possible amnesty deal as a “betrayal” of Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda, which promised to build a border wall while never giving into amnesty for illegal aliens.

By tying tax cuts to legislation like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) ‘DREAM Act,’ which would potentially give millions of illegal aliens amnesty and a pathway to citizenship, Kobach said the administration runs the risk of losing on taxes.

“[The deal] also renders the tax cuts less likely to occur because a DACA amnesty passed by Congress is bad policy,” Kobach said. “The American people have spoken against the DREAM Act before.”

“DACA is bad policy. The tax cuts can be obtained on their own merit without any massive concession to the radical left,” Kobach said.

Kobach said the Trump administration did not need to compromise at all with funding the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, citing how border funding legislation has previously passed through Congress on its own, without any compromise.

“It’s going to be hard for even some Democrats to explain why they would vote against that,” Kobach said.

DACA recipients currently hold upwards of 700,000 U.S. jobs. An ultimate end to the program – where DACA recipients are not given amnesty – would result in a 700,000 job stimulus for American workers. This would amount to nearly 30,000 new U.S. job openings for American workers every month once the program is officially phased out.

Though screening for DACA was previously touted as being sufficient in keeping criminals out, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) revealed that more than 2,100 recipients had their status revoked for being criminals or gang members.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.