Trump vows to fight on to end DACA
The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dealt President Trump a huge political blow, siding with the liberal wing to deny his bid to immediately end the protection against deportation of nearly 700,000 immigrants.
The enormity of that 5-4 ruling reverberated across the nation where the future of these immigrants has been anything but certain since Donald Trump became president and promised to end their immigration protection.
“All the tears, the sacrifices from so many of us are paying off,” said on Twitter Erika Andiola, a prominent Arizona dreamer.
But Trump on Friday vowed to start the process again to end the program, putting dreamers at the center of this
year’s election.
“We need to be ready to keep fighting if he tries to do this again. #DontLookAway America,” Andiola tweeted.
What Roberts did by siding with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Stephen G. Breyer represents merely a respite for dreamers and an opportunity for America to re-evaluate its values.
“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion released Thursday. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action.”
In other words, the justices agreed that Trump has the right to rescind the 2012 Obama directive known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, but rejected the procedure he used to do it.
Trump, who has constantly attacked immigrants, immediately used the court’s ruling to rile up his Republican base, saying conservative values are at stake in the November election.
“These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!,” he said on Twitter.
Trump and his core supporters have no sympathy for anyone else. But Roberts is giving the rest of us the chance to do some serious soul-searching about the kind of country America should be.
Under Trump’s presidency, America has turned into an ugly nation of white puritans fighting everyone else who embrace the “all men are created equal” ideals and seek to restore the United States as a nation that welcomes immigrants. Most Americans, including many Republicans, agree that the nearly 700,000 immigrants covered under DACA should stay. Many of them were brought to the United States as children and call this country home. Yet Congress has failed to send Trump legislation giving them a path to citizenship. Instead, lawmakers have used them as political pawns.
That has to end.
Congress must pass comprehensive immigration reform to not only legalize the dreamers but the millions of undocumented people in the country. During the coronavirus pandemic, they’ve once again proven their worth, toiling in the fields to feed America and providing other essential services.
We all know that won’t happen under Trump and his Republican cronies in the Senate. The fight must be at the ballot box in November.
We must elect a president and a Congress that values the idea that all men and women are created equal and that this country is stronger when it welcomes and respects cultural differences. can trace their roots to an enslaved ancestor. That should not be difficult to establish given the explosion of genealogical services. Skin color alone should not qualify. The compensation would not go to recent immigrants from Somalia or anyone whose ancestors emigrated from Africa of their own free will, although it would include the offspring of such people who married descendants of the formerly enslaved.
There is an obvious precedent for reparations to black Americans in the legislation that compensated Japanese Americans for their internment during World War II. The principles are identical. The only difference would be the scope of the indemnification; $1.6 billion was paid in reparations to over 82,000 Japanese Americans.
Bills to study how a reparations program might work are pending in the Senate and House, and gathering Democratic co-sponsors. Perhaps the indignation unleashed by the killing of George Floyd will prompt more members from the other side of the aisle to support efforts to right a historic wrong.