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If Feds End DACA Program, Sacramento Officials Won't Change Enforcement

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Their parents brought them to California as children, for a better life than the one they'd ever have in Mexico.

"I didn't know I was undocumented until I started looking for a job," Lupe Canseco.

"No one deserves to live in fear every day going outside of their home," said Rosemary Ramirez.

Now, these Sacramento college students face rejection from the only place they've ever known as home.

"What is being proposed by our president is shameful," said City Councilman Jay Schenirer.

As President Donald Trump considers deporting hundreds of thousand of undocumented immigrants, so-called dreamers, unlawfully brought to the U.S. as children, Sacramento city leaders are coming to their defense.

"Regardless of what federal program gets changed, our mission statement doesn't change," Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn said.

Hahn is vowing to go after violent criminals, not those young undocumented immigrants protected under DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program.

But if Trump ends the Obama-era program that allows dreamers to live and work here legally, attorneys say there's very little relief in sight.

"If they've had a DUI or any type of crime, they're declined," said Immigration Attorney Douglas Lehrman.

Lehrman says most would be entitled to deportation trials. But for Lupe Canseco, the reality is grim.

"A lot of folks are going to lose what we worked so hard for. Put yourself in our shoes," she said.

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