Former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions

United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a news briefing Tuesday morning to announced that a program that has protected hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought into the country illegally as children “is being rescinded.”

“The program known as DACA, that was effectuated under the Obama administration, is being rescinded,” Sessions said.

The announcement came amid reports that President Donald Trump planned to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, the 2012 program which defers deportation for nearly 800,000 young people who entered the United States illegally as children.

“There is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration laws,” Sessions said. “If we are to further our goal of strengthening the Constitutional order and rule of law in America, the Department of Justice can not defend this overreach.”