Urgency gone from debate on ‘Dreamers’
High court’s refusal to take up DACA puts issue on back burner
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to take up President Trump’s order to end deportation protections for 690,000 young immigrants by next Monday effectively deprives both the administration and Democrats of leverage to make major changes to U.S. immigration law — at least for now.
“The urgency has been completely sucked out of it,” said Cesar Vargas, co-director of the Dream Action Coalition, a group pushing for legal status.
President Trump had canceled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, created by former President Barack Obama by executive order, and gave Congress until next Monday to devise a permanent fix. The program provides legal status to 690,000 undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as minors.
But a San Francisco federal judge blocked Trump’s directive on Jan. 9 and, on Monday, the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s emergency appeal. The justices ordered the case to proceed through regular channels, effectively keeping the program alive for at least a year until the courts issue a final decision.
Trump had used the looming deportation threat to pressure Democrats to meet his demands to reduce legal immigration and spend billions of dollars on a border wall, in exchange for providing the young immigrants legal status.
“Democrats were pretty much on the edge of a cliff,” Vargas said, where the administration could say, “Take this, or
the ‘Dreamers’ are going to be deported,” referring to the moniker used for the young immigrants.
If the issue remains tied up in the courts past November as many expect, Trump faces the prospect that the midterm elections could reduce Republican majorities in the House and Senate, and potentially put Democrats in charge.
“Now we have more space,” Vargas said. “Now we have more time to wait until 2018, after the midterm elections.”
Democrats, for their part, used the deportation deadline to try to secure permanent legal status not only for the 690,0000 DACA enrollees, but for many more of them who had not enrolled. Some Democratic plans called for legal status for more than 3 million people, and Trump himself proposed a path to citizenship for 1.8 million.
The program itself is something of a Band-Aid created in response to congressional inaction, with a rolling two-year renewal that allows immigrants to work and attend school, but not to become citizens. But with Monday’s deadline gone, Republicans are under no pressure to help Democrats craft a permanent fix.
The court decision is “a temporary reprieve,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont. “There’s still this huge group of people who haven’t taken advantage of the program who are in limbo who we need to stand up for. What this does is just take some of the worst-case scenarios off the table for a while, but it’s not in any way a permanent fix.”
Trump’s order rescinding DACA, Congress’ inability to come up with a solution and the impending deadline pushed immigration to the front of Washington’s agenda. Along the way, developments included a government shutdown, an unusual televised bipartisan meeting at the White House, a flurry of legislative proposals in the Senate, a vulgar outburst from Trump over one of those bills, a record eight-hour House floor speech by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, and a rare Senate debate over competing options, none of which wound up passing.
Meanwhile, Democrats gradually acceded, at least in part, to the $25 billion Trump had demanded for a wall on the border with Mexico and other enforcement measures.
Trump also tried to secure significant cuts to future legal immigration. He proposed ending the ability of future immigrants to sponsor their parents, adult siblings and adult children, and terminating the diversity visa lottery that permits entry each year of 50,000 people from countries that are not major sources of immigration to the United States.
Some Senate Democrats voted for legislation that would have prevented the young immigrants from sponsoring their parents for citizenship, a significant bow in Trump’s direction.
The Justice Department took the DACA case to the Supreme Court after U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco ruled against Trump on lawsuits filed by DACA recipients, the University of California and several cities.
With Monday’s Supreme Court decision, the case now goes back to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Ultimately, the DACA case still could wind up before the Supreme Court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority.
For the time being, though, the lack of a deadline makes the issue “a whole lot less salient across the board,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group pushing for reducing immigration.
“The White House doesn’t have the same leverage to make these other changes,” Krikorian said, “and at the same time the people who have DACA aren’t in any position to get permanent status either.”