McCain on DACA: "We Need It To Go Through Congress... We Can Do It"

Sen. John McCain discusses the issue of DACA with CNN's Jake Tapper. He makes the case that the program must become permanent, but only through the properly established legal means.

TAPPER: You've been -- you've been very critical of the president when it comes to his moves on DACA, the Obama era program that provided some temporary protections for undocumented immigrants brought here as children through no fault of their own.

You said that the president's decision to end DACA is an unacceptable reversal of promises made. Do you think that Congress should codify DACA? And do you think there should be a path to citizenship for the so called Dreamers?

MCCAIN: I think yes and yes. But I think it ought to be done in a comprehensive fashion.

You know, a few year ago we passed through the Senate with a vote of 68 votes comprehensive immigration reform. That STEM -- science technology and engineering people, guest workers, a number of other provisions which makes it comprehensive. Border security, et cetera. We need to do that and so that -- and make that part of it the Dreamers' part of it.

Second of all, it is not conscionable to tell young people who came here as children that they have to go back to a country that they don't know. And by the way there is 900 of these Dreamers that are serving in uniform in United States military.

Now, are we going to go to a young man or woman serving in Afghanistan or Iraq today and say, hey, by the way, you're a Dreamer. Get back to -- fill in the blank.

We're not going to do that to these young men and women who are serving in uniform. But we need a comprehensive plan. We need it to go through Congress, which DACA did not, as you know.

TAPPER: Right.

MCCAIN: And we did it once in the Senate. We can do it again in a bipartisan fashion. And we're going to talk about how partisanship is now -- seems to be dominating the environment in Washington to the detriment of the American people.