WASHINGTON — (CNN) The Trump administration on Tuesday formally announced the end of DACA — a program that had protected nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation.

The Department of Homeland Security will stop processing any new applications for the program as of Tuesday and has formally rescinded the Obama administration policy.

“I am here today to announce that the program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration is being rescinded,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Tuesday at a Justice Department news conference.

But the agency also announced a plan to continue renewing permits for anyone whose status expires in the next six months, giving Congress time to act before any currently protected individuals lose their ability to work, study and live without fear in the US.

In the five years since DACA was enacted, the nearly 800,000 individuals who have received the protections have started families, pursued careers and studied in schools and universities across the United States. The business community and education community at large has joined Democrats and many moderate Republicans in supporting the program, citing the contributions to society from the population and the sympathetic fact that many Dreamers have never known another home than the US.

The Trump administration pitched the move as the “least disruptive” option available after facing a threat from 10 conservative state attorneys general to challenge the program in court, according to senior administration officials briefing reporters on the move.

Sessions had determined that the program would not be likely to withstand that court challenge, the administration said.

The move sets a clock for Congress to act to preserve the program’s protections before the DACA recipients begin losing their status March 5, 2018.

No one’s DACA status will be revoked before it expires, administration officials said, and any applications already received by Tuesday will be processed.

Anyone who’s status expires by March 5 has one month to apply for a new two-year permit, and those applications will be processed.

If Congress were not to act, and DACA begins to expire, nearly 300,000 people could begin to lose their status in 2018, and more than 320,000 would lose their status from January to August 2019. More than 200,000 recipients have their DACA expiring in the window that DHS will allow renewal.

Deportations?

Speaking with reporters on a conference call on condition of anonymity, DHS did not rule out that anyone with expired DACA would then be subject to deportation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they will continue to prioritize for enforcement people with criminal records, people who re-enter the US illegally and those with final orders of removal.

But officials said there will be no formal guidance that former DACA recipients are not eligible for deportation, and ICE officers in the field who encounter them will be making a case-by-case judgment as to whether to arrest that individual and process them for deportation.

The administration insisted its approach was designed to offer some security to DACA recipients, emphasizing that if it had allowed the courts to decide the issue, then would have been risking an immediate and abrupt end to DACA at the hands of a judge.

But it also was made clear that once DACA begins to expire, if Congress doesn’t act, then people formerly protected “would be like any other person who’s in the country illegally,” according to a senior DHS official.

All of the information provided to the government by DACA applicants will remain in the DHS system. US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers the program, will give that information to ICE if requested if “there’s a significant law enforcement or national security interest,” an official said.

While they won’t be specifically targeted, DHS said, they could be arrested and deported if they are encountered by ICE officers. And their information, which they provided extensively for their DACA applications, will continue to reside in DHS systems and could be accessed if officers feel it’s necessary in the course of an investigation.

DHS said it had on plans to issue formal guidelines on how former DACA recipients — or their information — will be treated beyond the current operating procedures of DHS.

“To be clear, what ICE is doing now is what Congress intended, we’re actually enforcing the law the way it is written,” said a senior ICE official. “(This is t)he first President who’s asked us to enforce the law the way it is written and not asked us to have some executive interpretation of the law.”

The officials placed the onus on Congress to make any changes to the system.

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