Immigrant move ‘unfair’
PRESIDENT Donald Trump lashed out yesterday at the US judicial system as broken and unfair after a judge blocked his decision to end a programme that protects so-called “Dreamers” from deportation.
Earlier, the White House had called the ruling on Tuesday by US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco outrageous, coming the same day Trump met legislators from both camps on the so-called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or Daca, programme.
“It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our court system is when the opposing side in a case [such as Daca] always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts,” Trump said in a tweet.
The Daca programme, instituted by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama in 2012, protects from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants who arrived in the country illegally as children.
Alsup said the Department of Justice’s view that the programme was illegal was based on a flawed legal premise.
Unless his order is overturned by a higher court, Daca recipients will now be eligible to submit renewal applications and the government will be required to post reasonable public notice that the programme is once again active.
In September, Trump said he was scrapping the programme, but delayed enforcement to give Congress six months – until March – to craft a lasting solution.
The government was sued on grounds that ending the programme was arbitrary and done without following proper legal procedures.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump had taken command of the White House meeting to coax Republican and Democratic legislators toward a compromise on the fate of Dreamers. He also signalled that he was open to more comprehensive immigration reform to address millions of other undocumented people living in the shadows, as long as Democrats were willing to countenance greater border security, including a controversial wall along the Mexican border.
“It should be a bill of love,” Trump said of a measure under negotiation that would protect hundreds of thousands of Dreamers from deportation.
“But it also has to be a bill where we’re able to secure our border.
“Drugs are pouring into our country at a record pace. A lot of people are coming in that we can’t have,” Trump said, urging lawmakers to “put country before party” and strike a quick solution.
He said he would take the heat politically if they moved toward broader action that would provide a pathway to citizenship for about 11 million undocumented immigrants.