Supreme Court to hear case on DACA
Fate of 700,000 ‘Dreamers’ could hang in balance
The Supreme Court on Friday announced it will review the legality of DACA next year, setting the stage for a landmark decision at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign that will determine the fate of hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants.
The high court will consider whether President Trump has the legal authority to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, established in 2012 by thenPresident Barack Obama. It granted deportation relief and work permits to more than 700,000 “Dreamers” brought to the United States illegally as children.
Justices will hear oral arguments this fall and will probably make a decision early next year, at last settling a contentious tugofwar between Trump and Democrats in Congress.
“The timing is going to be really interesting because this ruling is going to come up in spring or summer, right as the presidential race is going to be
heating up,” said Deep Gulasekaram, a law professor at Santa Clara University. “I think it’s going to play into that in a significant way.”
At stake is the future of hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who have relied on the program for work and educational opportunities since its inception — opportunities that they probably wouldn’t have had if the program didn’t exist, according to DACA recipients and advocates.
“We are pleased the Supreme Court agreed that this issue needs resolution. We look forward to presenting our case before the Court,” said Department of Justice spokesman Alexei Woltornist in a statement Friday.
The decision will have significant implications in California, where there are more than 200,000 DACA recipients. Now in their 20s and early 30s, they came to the U.S. before turning 16 and have continuously lived in the country since 2007.
Dreamers who had DACA before it was rescinded can renew their status every two years, but the government is no longer accepting new applications.
The program allowed Daniela Zopiyactle, 23, to pursue a degree in forensic science at San Jose State University. She’s also worked in the school’s IT department for the past three years.
“I saw how DACA really helped me and made my life and my parents’ lives a little easier,” said Zopiyactle, who was brought illegally to the U.S. in 2000 from Veracruz, Mexico, at age 3. Her older brother also has DACA.
Zopiyactle hasn’t thought about what may happen if the Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration’s decision to end DACA.
“I feel like that’s a topic that is in the back of our minds, but we haven’t really thought about what we’re going to do,” she said.
“I know that right away my brother and I would lose our jobs. I feel like we’d be really devastated.”
Trump has had varying stances through the years on whether to keep DACA, at times appearing sympathetic toward Dreamers.
The president rescinded DACA in September 2017 through an executive order, claiming Obama had overstepped his authority when he created the program.
“I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents,” Trump said in a statement following its rescindment. “But we must also recognize that we are a nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”
Federal judges in San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., kept the program alive, saying Obama acted within a president’s authority to set priorities for deporting unauthorized immigrants, and that Trump had offered no reasoned explanation for repealing the program. Two federal appeals courts, including one in San Francisco, backed those arguments.
“Deferred action has been a feature of our immigration system ... and has been recognized as a practical reality by both Congress and the courts,” said Judge Kim Wardlaw after the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in San Francisco last year. “We therefore conclude that DACA was a permissible exercise of executive discretion.”
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Friday repeated his promise to protect DACA recipients and cited the state’s legal success in defending the program.
Becerra and attorneys general of Maine, Maryland and Minnesota filed a lawsuit against the administration in 2017 for canceling DACA.
“Along the way in this long journey to protect Dreamers ... five courts have already rendered judgments that have ruled with us,” he said. “They are people who have become integral to our communities and indispensable to our future economic success.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DSan Francisco, said DACA empowered Dreamers to “come out of the shadows” and pursue their American dream.
“In rescinding DACA and its vital protections, the Trump administration forced hundreds of thousands of brave young men and women to live under a cloud of fear and uncertainty,” she said in a statement Friday. “The Supreme Court must now uphold the rulings of lower courts across the country, which have determined that the Trump Administration’s cruel decision to terminate DACA was illegal.”
The program has received overwhelming bipartisan support — a point that will complicate matters for Trump and fellow Republicans in the election, said Gulasekaram.
“On the one hand, it’s going to be very clear that the Trump base is going to want this recision,” he said.
“But Dream Act legislation is the one thing that has always enjoyed some measure — and at times a broad measure — of bipartisan support. To have it be front and center in a Supreme Court opinion where they’re arguing to take this away is going to be a tricky thing for the Trump administration to navigate.”
Yet many Dreamers say the program has significant limitations that exclude other Dreamers and has pitted certain immigrants against one another. They’ve also criticized the president for using DACA as a bargaining chip to push for a border wall and heightened immigration enforcement.
“It’s helped me personally, professionally and academically,” said Laith Ocean, 21, a DACA recipient majoring in sociology at UC Berkeley who came to the U.S. from Nicaragua at age 7. “But it’s been a lot more detrimental to our community.”
“I think DACA is still being used as a way to distract communities now from the other issues that are happening,” Ocean said.