SWEET DREAMS
Supremes reject Don's DACA nix
The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the White House from ending the Obama-era program that shields young illegal immigrants dubbed “Dreamers” from being deported — a blow to President Trump’s immigration policy.
The 5-4 decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld lower-court rulings that found Trump’s move to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program established by President Barack Obama in 2012 was unlawful.
The ruling said the Trump administration failed to give adequate justification for terminating the program that protects nearly 700,000 young immigrants brought into the country as children.
The decision keeps the program intact, but Roberts said the Department of Homeland Security could try again to rescind DACA.
“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” Roberts wrote. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action.
“Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what, if anything, to do about the hardship to DACA recipients.”
Roberts, a conservative, joined the court’s four liberal justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor — in the decision.
Three of four remaining conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — dissented, arguing that DACA was itself illegal because it was enacted unilaterally by the Obama administration.
“Today’s decision must be recognized for what it is: an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision,” Thomas wrote.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued his own dissent.
DACA covers people who were brought into the country illegally by their parents and who, in some cases, have no memory of any home other than the US.
Facing an impasse over immigration reform with Congress, Obama issued a directive in June 2012 establishing DACA to protect Dreamers from deportation while allowing them to work legally in the country.
The Department of Homeland Security has continued to process two-year DACA renewals so hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients have protections stretching beyond the election.
United We Dream, an advocacy organization for young immigrants, hailed the ruling.
“While this win will bring temporary relief to immigrant youth and our families who have been living in limbo since Trump ended DACA in 2017, our fight is not done,” said the group’s deputy executive director, Greisa Martinez Rosas, who is a DACA recipient.
New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who led a coalition to Washington, DC, in November for oral arguments, said the decision “reaffirms that there is no question that home is here for more than 700,000 Dreamers across the country.”
It’s great for the Dreamers in the short term, but a long-term loser for the rule of law and for immigration reform: That’s the bottom line of the Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday on President Trump’s move to rescind his predecessor’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order.
Some 700,000 immigrants brought to America illegally by their parents, who registered under DACA, can heave a sigh of relief: They can continue working and living without fear of deportation. That was plainly Chief Justice John Roberts’ intent — but rulings are supposed to be about law, not desired results.
Roberts, joined by the court’s four liberals, makes much to-do about how Team Trump failed to jump through various procedural hoops before canceling the Obama order — but those are hoops that Obama also didn’t jump through before issuing it.
Obama had tried and failed to get Congress to set up a program to protect such children (and other illegal immigrants as well). So he simply ignored the legislative branch and set up the DACA program, letting immigrant kids apply for temporary status that not only shields them from deportation but grants legal rights to work, attend college and so on.
He’d previously noted time and again that he lacked the power to do that, saying that “laws on the books” already make “very clear” how to enforce the immigration system, and “for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president.”
He went ahead with DACA anyway. Trump set out to do it right — giving Congress six months’ notice that DACA was going away, and imploring it to pass a law to address the Dreamers’ status. “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military?” he asked in 2017.
Fact is, most Americans — including many Republicans — sympathize with these young people, who had little say in their parents’ decision to come to America. Many barely know the countries of their birth; they consider America their home. But fixing the issue requires new law — which falls to Congress, not to the president or the courts.
And if Roberts & Co. hadn’t yet again sidelined Trump’s order, Congress would be under huge pressure to cut a deal for the Dreamers. Now neither side has to compromise. Democrats refuse to address larger issues of immigration, including border security.
In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas hit the nail on the head: The ruling was “an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision.” This gives a “green light for future political battles to be fought in this court rather than where they rightfully belong — the political branches.”
Which also guarantees that every highcourt nomination will become a huge political battle.
The public is supposed to elect lawmakers in this country. Too bad the nation’s highest court has such contempt for democracy.