Trump: DACA decision ‘sometime over the weekend’

President Trump said Friday the White House will announce a decision on the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program “sometime over the weekend, maybe this afternoon.”

He later told the White House press pool the announcement will “probably [be] Sunday, Saturday. Latest will be Monday.”

White House sources have given conflicting information over the past week to multiple media outlets about when an announcement will be made, creating some confusion as to whether and when Trump could end the Obama-era program.

The White House is under a Texas-imposed deadline to start court action against DACA on Sept. 5 unless Trump rescinds the program first.

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Still, Trump has said he’ll treat “Dreamers” — recipients of DACA — “with heart.”

“We love Dreamers, we love everybody,” Trump said at the White House on Friday.

Multiple states have challenged the program in court and the Trump administration is under pressure to decide whether to defend it.

White House chief of staff John Kelly is seen as a strong voice sympathetic to DACA recipients, but he’s also said he doesn’t believe the program would withstand the legal challenge.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who’s declined to say whether he’ll defend the program in court, is perceived as an opponent of the program.

Under DACA, nearly 800,000 people brought to the country illegally as children received deferral from deportation and a work permit, renewable every two years.

An outright cancellation of the program could leave participants unprotected from deportation, and immigrant rights activists fear their application documents could be used against them by federal immigration enforcement officials.

A slew of Republicans have come out against cancellation of the program, while still maintaining that Obama’s creation of DACA was a case of executive overreach.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told Janesville, Wis., radio station WCLO on Friday he doesn’t think Trump should end the program.

“The Speaker does not agree with President Obama’s DACA overreach. He believes it is Congress’s responsibility to set immigration law,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong told The Hill in an email.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said in a statement Friday he had “urged” the president not to end the program.

And some congressional Republicans have promoted legislation to make permanent the benefits of DACA.

GOP Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.) and Carlos Curbelo (Fla.) have pushed different bills in the House, while Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) has taken the lead in the Senate.

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) went further, threatening to introduce a discharge petition — a vote to skip the committee process and move to a full House vote — on legislation he introduced protecting DACA recipients.

-This report was updated at 1:55 p.m.