Facebook Inc (Nasdaq: FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t pull any punches in condemning President Donald Trump’s decision to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced it is officially ending the DACA program, a decision that many American business leaders oppose.
DACA, a policy implemented during the Obama administration, allows illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors to remain inside the country rather than face the prospect of immediate deportation.
“The decision to end DACA is not just wrong,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “It is particularly cruel to offer young people the American dream, encourage them to come out of the shadows and trust our government, and then punish them for it.”
[See: 9 ETFs to Buy Under President Donald Trump.]
Since its implementation in 2012, the DACA program has protected more than 800,000 from deportation while they work and go to school in the U.S.
Zuckerberg is one of more than 400 U.S. business leaders who signed an open letter to Trump last week urging him to allow the DACA program to continue.
“Dreamers are vital to the future of our companies and our economy,” the letter reads.
The letter claims eliminating DACA would cut $460.3 billion from the national gross domestic product and cost the government $24.6 billion in lost Social Security and Medicare tax revenue.
Other signees to the letter include Amazon.com ( AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft Corp. ( MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella, Alphabet ( GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Larry Page, Apple ( AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, Netflix ( NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings and Twitter ( TWTR) CEO Jack Dorsey.
[Read: 10 Reasons Why Everyone Should Own Facebook Stock.]
The DACA issue isn’t the first time Trump has butted heads with U.S. business leaders. He recently disbanded two presidential business councils after a number of CEO council members resigned in protest of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and his controversial comments following the Charlottesville white supremacist rally.
Congress now has six months to come up with a replacement for DACA or investors could be facing a potentially destabilizing disruption in the U.S. economy.
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Business Leaders Condemn Trump’s DACA Decision originally appeared on usnews.com
