According to immigration attorney Matthew Kolken, the Trump administration has “done more” to help unaccompanied refugee children in two weeks than former President Obama ever did.<br />“President Trump in two weeks has already done more for unaccompanied refugee children than Obama did in two years,” Kolken told the Daily Mail. After taking office, Trump issued a memorandum to the Justice Department effectively ending the Obama-era practice of prioritizing unaccompanied children for deportation.<br /><br />“Maybe the president has a heart when it comes to unaccompanied children. There’s no other explanation,” he said.<br /><br />Calling for a reexamination of Trump’s immigration policy, Kolken described Democrats as possessing an “unbridled hypocrisy” in their criticisms of Trump.<br /><br />“Democrats who are horrified [at Trump] could allow President Obama to act in the most unlawful way out of any president I have seen in my lifetime,” he remarked.<br /><br />In comparison to Trump, Obama deported more than 2.5 million people between the years 2009 and 2015, expediting cases against children and families and earning himself the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief.”<br /><br />Nearly 40,000 immigrant cases came under this expedited process with roughly 43 percent of those cases involving children that did not have access to a lawyer.<br /><br />Kolken, describing the policy, said it was “easily the most inhumane immigration law in the last 20 years.”<br /><br />That all changed on Jan. 31, however, when Trump issued a memorandum which was signed off by Chief Immigration Judge MaryBeth Keller for the Executive Office for Immigration Review.<br /><br />Now, instead of being prioritized for deportation, Kolken says children “are being put to the back of the line for scheduling of cases.”<br /><br />“This means that it could be quite a long time before they have to have a hearing before a judge,” he added.<br /><br />As part of his campaign platform, Trump vowed to prioritize the deportation of criminal aliens above all else, which may in part explain this change in policy.<br /><br />Kolken, an immigration lawyer and the managing partner of Kolken & Kolken, located in Buffalo, New York, said that the memorandum meant that children 'are being put to the back of the line for scheduling of cases'. <br /><br />He told DailyMail.com: 'This means that it could be quite a long time before they have to have a hearing before a judge. <br /><br />'Maybe the President has a heart when it comes to unaccompanied children. There's no other explanation'. <br /><br />Kolken said Obama's prioritization of unaccompanied children for deportation was 'easily the most inhumane immigration law in the last 20 years'.<br /><br />
