I was against the amnesty in 1986 and in 1991 I was threatened by officials in an employment office for EOT cause I questioned papers of their client so I filled out the I9 and quit caring about Illegals. So if the Government don’t do their job then illegals who came here can claim squatters right or give them amnesty or what ever you want to call it. But the children who grew up here should be given a easy path to be legal. The government needs to do its job but they don’t.
In property law, that's called "adverse possession."
There are also legal doctrines that inhibit taking a legal action, because one "sat on it" for too long. "Statute of limitations" is one, pretty well known, another is "the equitable doctrine of laches."
All roughly "you snooze, you lose" principles.
I can well see a US federal court asserting some flavor of this in favor of people in the country illegally, captured and released. The feds could have deported, but chose not to; therefore, they cannot deport.
Trust in the federal government to "do the right thing" when it comes to immigration (and a few other subjects) is misplaced.
You have the federal government who has not done it's job for the last 40 years. Now if we suddenly start enforcing the law we have people who never lived in Mexico eligible to be tossed out.
There are people who came here illegally and had (illegal alien) children or came here with small babies. Now these children are grown up never having known or lived in Mexico.
The problem is the 40 years of lax enforcement- so what do we do about that?