Supreme Court hears arguments in DACA case
WASHINGTON — As hundreds of immigrants and their allies rallied outside, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday that will decide the future of a program that allows more than 700,000 young adults who came to the country illegally as children to live and work in the United States.
In one of the most highly anticipated cases of the Supreme Court’s term, Democratic attorneys general and lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was wrongfully terminated by President Donald Trump without a real policy basis.
But lawyers for the Trump administration countered that President Barack Obama lacked the authority to create the DACA program in 2012 and it has operated illegally since.
The case pits presidential power against immigration law — one of the most controversial issues of the Trump administration.
The case will be decided by five conservative and four liberal justices in the coming months. Based on their questions, justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh appeared likely to support the Trump administration based on beliefs that Trump's decision is beyond the power of the courts to review. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor seemed to favor the arguments of the proDACA lawyers by suggesting the Trump administration should have more explanation to justify their decision. Chief Justice John Roberts may be the deciding vote again between the conservative and liberal camps.
About 4,000 DACA recipients live in Connecticut, while 7,000 could have been eligible for the program before it was frozen, according the Connecticut Attorney General’s office. Fortyfive Connecticut residents rode in a bus to D.C. Tuesday morning to be present for the Supreme Court arguments.
“I wanted to come here to let the judges, the Supreme Court and this administration know that young people in this country are not afraid to fight for our right to stay here and live our lives freely,” said Anthony Barroso, a 26yearold DACA recipient and New Haven resident.
The DACA program allows the children of undocumented immigrants to access a renewable, temporary status to attend college and work in the U.S. as long as they followed the rules and had no criminal record. If the court sides with the Trump administration, thousands of young immigrants may be vulnerable to deportation.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said the Trump administration’s attempt to rescind DACA is “unlawful and wrong and cruel and pointless,” at a press conference in Willimantic, Conn. Connecticut is among 16 states whose Democratic attorneys general challenged Trump’s decision to end DACA.
Noel J. Francisco, solicitor general of the Department of Justice, said in 2017 a lower court held that the expansion of DACA was likely unlawful, a judgment affirmed by the Supreme Court.
“In the face of those decisions, the Department of Homeland Security reasonably determined that it no longer wished to retain the DACA policy based on its belief that the policy was illegal, its serious doubts about its illegality, and its general opposition to broad nonenforcement policies,” said Francisco, who argued on behalf of the Trump administration Tuesday.
DACA was created by an Obama executive order, after Congress failed to pass the Dream Act containing providing status for these young immigrants. It was rescinded by the Trump administration in Sept. 2017.
Trump said at the time, he was not interested in “punishing children,” but his attitude toward DACA recipients appears to have grown less sympathetic, although he said he would pursue a deal with Democrats in Congress to keep the socalled “dreamers” in the U.S.
“Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from ‘angels,’” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “Some are very tough, hardened criminals. President Obama said he had no legal right to sign order, but would anyway. If Supreme Court remedies with overturn, a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!”
Multiple lower court cases fighting the end of the program have kept DACA in operation since 2017 and forestalled deportations.
A federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 2018 decided it was likely that the way the Trump administration ended DACA was capricious, arbitrary and unlawful. That ruling came in response to two cases. One was filed by a coalition of 16 attorneys general, including former Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen. The attorneys general argued ending the program was harmful to the economies of their states, as well as “devastating” to the young immigrants, also known as “dreamers.”
“We stand together as a firewall to protect and defend each one of you,” Tong told students at Eastern Connecticut State University Tuesday. Tong, whose father came to the U.S. on a tourist visa and overstayed, said the issue is “extraordinarily personal” for him.
Another case challenging the halt of DACA was filed by six young DACA recipients from New York, represented by the Yale Law School Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic. Three Yale Law School professors, Marisol Orihuela, Muneer Ahmad and Michael J. Wishnie, represented these plaintiffs before the Supreme Court Tuesday, but did not make oral arguments.