‘Dreamers’ ask for stay
Supreme Court weighs fate of DACA
The fate of the “Dreamers” was turned over to the US Supreme Court on Tuesday, as lawyers battled over President Trump’s push to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“This is a serious decision,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of two Trump appointees on the majority-conservative panel, which is widely expected to return a 5-4 ruling in favor of scrapping the Obama-era initiative. “We all agree on that.”
The hearing played out as hundreds of Dreamers and supporters rallied outside — and hours after Trump tweeted his disapproval of the program, which protects almost 700,000 immigrants who entered the US illegally as children from deportation.
“Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from ‘angels,’ ” tweeted the president. “Some are very tough, hardened criminals,” he added, though the program excludes anyone with a felony conviction or several serious misdemeanors.
Trump — who has made immigration policies and his push for a wall along the US-Mexican border hallmarks of his presidency — also argued that his predecessor overstepped his authority by creating DACA through executive action rather than going through Congress.
“President Obama said he had no legal right to sign order, but would anyway,” Trump wrote.
The president also vowed to work with Democrats to continue protecting the Dreamers if the Supreme Court backs his 2017 plan to rescind the program. “If Supreme Court remedies with overturn, a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!” he wrote.
However, no deal has been struck despite similar past assurances from Trump. His promise Tuesday was greeted with skepticism by the DACA boosters in DC outside the court — who banged drums and bore signs reading “home is here” and “defend DACA” — and the panel’s liberal jurists.
“The president [previously] told Dreamers that they were safe and he’d find a way to keep them here,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “He didn’t.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, while stopping short of calling out Trump, questioned the White House’s motives.
The administration could have said, “We don’t like DACA and we’re taking responsibility for that, instead of trying to put the blame on the law,” she said.
US Solicitor General Noel
Francisco, who argued the White House’s case, which is premised upon then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ 2017 conclusion that the program wasn’t on solid legal footing, said the administration was prepared to end DACA whatever the fallout. “We own this,” Francisco told the panel.