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The nations battle lines over immigration enforcement deepened Friday after Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly rescinded an Obama-era memo that sought to shield millions of parents of U.S. citizens and others from deportation.

Kelly was fulfilling part of a campaign promise that President Trump had made to overturn on his first day in office two of former president Barack Obamas controversial memos on illegal immigration.

The rescinded memo was never implemented, and it is the subject of an ongoing federal lawsuit over whether Obama had the authority in 2014 to even issue the order.

But the Trump administrations action late Thursday spurred fears that the president would also revoke the second memo, which protects undocumented immigrants brought here as children, and that the administration would target families indiscriminately for deportation.

This action by President Trump demonstrates to us that they have no compassion, they have no common sense, they have no humanity, said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

Kelly rescinded the memo at the deadline for the parties to decide how the lawsuit should proceed. In his statement, Kelly said there was no credible path forward for the program Obama had proposed.

I applaud President Trump, said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed the lawsuit that halted the 2014 memo. I am proud to have led a 26-state coalition that went all the way to the Supreme Court to block this unlawful edict.

Kelly said the second program, the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative, would remain intact. The program has transformed the lives of nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, allowing them to avoid deportation and work and drive legally.

That reassurance from the administration drew mild criticism from Trump supporters who favor increased immigration enforcement.

Many protested last week when data released by the Department of Homeland Security showed the agency has issued thousands of new permits under the 2012 program, despite Trumps campaign-trail promise to eliminate it.

As a candidate, the president called both programs illegal executive amnesties.

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, whose backers are ascendant in the Trump administration, praised Kellys rescission of the 2014 initiative but said it calls into question the legitimacy of DACA, as well.

Advocates for immigrants said Kellys action was a stark reminder of the landscape facing the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and, especially, in Texas, which also recently passed a law to crack down on sanctuary cities. It takes effect Sept. 1.

Lawyers and activists say they are battling Immigration and Customs Enforcements attempts to deport immigrants, including a college student in Georgia who won a federal court battle this week to avoid deportation and a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a clean criminal record and who is the parent of two U.S. citizens.

On Tuesday, the nations top immigration enforcement official warned that undocumented immigrants should look over their shoulder.

But in Boston, the MIT janitor said he didnt want to live that way. Francisco Rodriguez, the 43-year-old father of two U.S. citizen children, said he has no criminal record and would have applied for Obamas 2014 program if it had been allowed to proceed.

Instead, he watched as Texas filed a lawsuit that temporarily halted the program. Then the Obama administration appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, finally losing last June.

Rodriguez said ICE had granted him several stays of deportation after he lost his asylum case but told him Tuesday that he has to prepare to go home. He has until July 13 to show up with a plane ticket to his native El Salvador.

He said he fled that country in 2006 after gangs tried to extort money from his construction company. In his country, he was a mechanical engineer. Now he cleans laboratories and offices for one of the best universities in the world.

This is very sad, he said of his pending deportation. But I know thats the new politics that we have with the new government. They say they could protect families. But theyre against the families.

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Immigration battle lines deepen as Trump administration rescinds Obama proposal - Washington Post