<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">US President Donald Trump has declared as &quot;dead&quot; a program that protects immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children and pressed Congress to immediately pass legislation to secure the US border with Mexico.&nbsp;</span></div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br />''</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Trump, who has taken a hard line toward immigration, said in September he would terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program introduced by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, but gave the Republican-controlled Congress until March 6 to replace it.</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br />''</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Congress failed to meet that deadline, but courts have ruled the program can remain in place for now.</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br />''</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The Republican president said in a Twitter post, DACA is dead because the Democrats did not care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon.</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br />''</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Senior administration officials told reporters that legislation was being prepared aimed at helping expedite some deportations of immigrants in the country illegally.&nbsp;</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br />''</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">They did not provide a timetable for submitting it to Congress and did not say whether provisions to help DACA recipients would be included.</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br />''</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Democrats blamed Trump for the tenuous status of a program that shielded hundreds of thousands of immigrants, often called &quot;Dreamers,&quot; from deportation and gave them work permits.</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br />''</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Trump also reiterated his call for Mexico to stop people from entering the United States, after saying on Sunday he would terminate a major trade accord with Mexico if it did not do more to secure its border with the United States.</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br />''</div>''<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The United States is renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada.</div>''<div class="yj6qo" style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"></div>''<div class="adL" style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"></div>