Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos donates $45 million to Dreamers scholarship program

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, have donated US$33 million ($45.4m) to a scholarship program for young "dreamers" called TheDream.US.

The donation from Bezos, who is the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth just shy of US$100 billion ($137.8b), will go towards funding 1,000 college scholarships, according to the Daily Mail.

And the money, the largest single donation the organisation has ever received, comes as President Donald Trump is trying to end the Obama-era DACA program and after his remarks about immigrants from "s***hole countries".

The scholarship program will fund U.S. high school graduates with a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status, an Obama-era program protecting young immigrants brought to the United States illegally by their parents - commonly known as Dreamers.

There are 2,850 students currently enrolled in different colleges as part of TheDream.US scholarship, which covers the cost of tuition, fees and books.

The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, reports that the scholarship has awared more than US$19m ($26.1m) to more than 1,700 immigrants since 2014, when it began.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday blasted the federal court system as "broken and unfair" after a judge blocked his administration's move to end the DACA program.

And Trump has been placed on the defensive about his comment during an Oval Office meeting that people from "high crime" or "s***hole countries get to come" to the United States.

The president has denied making the "s***hole" comment.

"The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used," Trump said, using unusually passive language in an effort to walk back the comment.

"What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made - a big setback for DACA!" Trump tweeted Friday.

The president's latest comments were immediately contradicted by Illinois Democratic Senator Richard Durbin, who was in the Oval Office meeting and says Trump made the "vile and vulgar" comments repeatedly.

Trump is attempting to phase out DACA by March and Democrats are currently fighting to preserve it.

Bezos' parents, Mike and Jackie Bezos, were among the early donors to TheDream.US. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pershing Square Foundation and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are also among the other major contributors to the program.