“Whether you agree with them having it or not, they’ve come out of the shadows," Sen. Lindsey Graham said. | AP Photo Graham preparing 'Dreamers' bill

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is readying legislation that would extend legal protections for previously undocumented immigrants who came here as children — benefits granted under a 2012 directive from President Barack Obama that are at risk with the incoming Trump administration.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to revoke Obama’s executive actions on immigration, including one that has shielded more than 740,000 young undocumented immigrants from being deported and gave them permits to work legally. With Trump’s surprise election earlier this year, Democrats on Capitol Hill and immigrant advocates have been urging the President-elect to back off those threats.


But should Trump follow through on that promise, some key lawmakers on Capitol Hill want to make sure those protections stay in place for the immigrants who willingly gave personal information to the federal government and went through background checks. One big fear among advocates is that the Trump administration could use that personal information to track down the immigrants to deport them.

“The worst outcome is to repeal the legal status that these kids have,” Graham said Wednesday. “Whether you agree with them having it or not, they’ve come out of the shadows.”

Graham said he is working with both Democrats and Republicans, and named Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) as one GOP supporter of the forthcoming legislation. While lawmakers are discussing the proposal now, actual legislation won’t be rolled out until the new Congress next year, Graham said. A spokesman for Flake said the senator is discussing "potential paths forward" in dealing with the DACA issue with several colleagues.

One Democrat who has spoken to Graham about the issue and potential legislative remedies is Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat who has been giving daily floor speeches since the election on behalf of the beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, who are known as Dreamers.

“Durbin will be involved in any effort to save the Dreamers,” spokesman Ben Marter said of the senator, who first introduced legislation to give Dreamers a pathway to citizenship 15 years ago and who first proposed the idea of DACA two years before Obama formally issued his directive.

The plan discussed by Graham would apply just to the immigrants who had been approved under the 2012 directive from Obama. Graham indicated that the legislation would be a bridge from a repeal of DACA “until we can fix the overall problem.”

“It’s going to be basically, if you have legal status, you’ll continue legal status,” Graham said. “I think it would pass overwhelmingly.”

