Yes you can make that arguement. Before I answer it, lets go back a step.

Unlawful,
Illegal,
Illicit,
Criminal.

1) An unlawful act is one not approved by law, but not necessarily against the law, either. We often use the term unlawful to differentate legal intent of the law vs the actual legal text of what the law says. Aka consequentialism vs dentology (duty).

2) An illegal act is a violation of law. But saying something is illegal does not talk about the severity or saliency of an illegal act. We use the term illegal to minor offenses, civil offenses, and criminal. It is identifying the problem without saying how important this problem.

3) Illicit carries a strong connotation of immorality, it is a willful choice and at negative ends with the intent of the law.

4) Criminal denotes punishable wrongdoing. Something that is illicit but even more so. Note this is a hyper simplification for there is a whole English legal tradition on the rules of what is a crime and yadda, yadda, yadda there is a reason why we have law school.

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Back to your question Jeo.

The adults (present tense), who came here as children (not of their will) and thus did not commit a criminal act (but did commit an illegal act, but not a crime, though their parents did commit a crime, the parents did have mens rea, a guilty mind.)

But these former children did commit an illegal act both as children and presently when they became an adult.

Are you arguing that they have a legal obligation to turn themselves into the authorities, or the legal obligation to depart this country as soon as they become 18. That is the question, the nature of our obligations.

You can make the case various ways. It is a freaking complicated matter.

(Skips the complexity and moves to a much more clear issue.)

But deporting people you have to follow a lawful manner of how you do it and this is literally in our constitution due to the bill of rights and 14th amendment, and other amendments (skips all the details.)

The 1st sentence of the 14th amendment is about citizenship, but the 2nd sentence is about how you treat all people regardless of citizenship, and this is made absolutely clear in the 2nd sentence where there is rules after the semicolon that applies to all people regardless of citizenship but especially for citizens (the part that applies before the semicolon.)

The do not have the right to live here automatically, but they do have the right to make the affirmative case. Aka you can't be reductionist and just refer to automaticity and Jeo you and Greg are trying to make the case saying you have to think of this with an automaticity mindset when it is literally the opposite with the law.

Just because something would be convent with a certain mindset does not make it so. (The law is not a convent thing.)

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This is why I am keep on bringing up the differences between 1) Unlawful, 2) Illegal, 3) Illicit, 4) Criminal. For 2 and 4 are not the same, and 3 and 4 are not the same.

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Maybe that Dick The Butcher guy had a point. "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" (the Blue here is this was meant as an ironic line, when you do a violent revolution you kill everyone who opposes you, and you go with the simple route instead of following a process.)

Regradless why are we hyperfocusing on deporting the 3.6 million who came here as children (and far less than these 3.6 million ever apply for DACA. Only about 800,000 people applied for DACA. Of those 3.6 million people who came here for children, only about half of them were eligible for DACA, but not everyone applied for various reasons)

There is 7 to 8 million who came her as adults and I think all our resources should be on these people for these people willfully committed a crime and if there is ever any backlog these people should have priority of deportation with only people who have committed other crimes that harm others should have the first priority of imprisonment or deportation.

Blah, blah, blah I can write more on this (I am trying to be concise.)

But I think it is immoral to be deporting those 800,000 people who did follow the rules, when we should be focusing on the 8 million people who very much did not follow the rules, and then there is the 2 million of change that are in between it who are in between these two group where they "kind of" followed the rules and "kind of" did not. These are 3 completely different groups (or 4 or 5 depending on how you count.) And they are not the same.