Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee opined on Friday that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which President Donald Trump rescinded earlier this month, could still go on – but only if the wall along the border with Mexico goes up first.

DACA protected approximately 800,000 illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as minors from deportation.

“The wall still has to happen, and the reason it does is because nobody’s going to trust the government that doesn't secure its borders,” Huckabee told Fox News.

“Once that’s done, I think we should do DACA,” he continued. “We should do something that says that you don’t punish kids for what their parents did. I’m a Conservative and I totally embrace that, but I embrace doing it in a constitutional way.”

According to Huckabee, “What the President did was incredibly generous, to say: ‘Congress, you’ve got six months. You’ve had years, but you’ve got six months because we’ve got to get this solved.’ He can’t do it by himself, and the people who suggest that he could or should apparently haven’t read the Constitution.”

Trump also “can’t abandon the idea – which I believe won him the election – that we are going to secure our borders, we’re going to take control of who we are as a nation. If he abandons that, then the President would frankly be in real trouble.”

Reports on Thursday said Trump may be open to legalizing some 800,000 illegal immigrants in the United States in exchange for Democratic support in funding a border wall on America’s southern frontier.

Senior congressional Democrats announced that they had struck a deal with the President which would see the DACA policy passed into law, but Trump later stated that no deal had been reached.

In follow-up comments, however, the President suggested he was prepared for a compromise deal, backing legislation granting legal status to Dreamers in exchange for Democratic support for construction of a wall along the southern border.

In his comments Friday, Huckabee said he did not believe Trump would not tie the issue of the wall with a deal on DACA.

“I don’t think he would. I don’t think he could. I think he would understand the backlash toward him would be so extraordinary and not just from the right. I think his focus on border security has to be maintained, and if he does that, then I think he earns the right to successfully get DACA and other immigrant reforms accomplished.”

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)