Justices seem to side with Trump on DACA
Ending program could affect 700K immigrants
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to side with the Trump administration in its effort to end a program that lets nearly 700,000 young, undocumented immigrants live and work in the USA without fear of deportation.
During an extended, 80-minute oral argument inside a packed courtroom that included some of the threatened immigrants, several conservative justices noted the Department of Homeland Security laid out several reasons for its decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged that the case’s “sympathetic facts ... speak to all of us,” but he said the large number of people affected and the impact ending DACA would have on employers and entire communities was taken into consideration.
The court’s four liberal justices argued that the decision to end DACA should rise or fall on the administration’s tenuous claim that it was illegal, rather than what Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said might be a more legitimate reason: “We don’t like DACA, and we’re taking responsibility for that, instead of trying to put the blame on the law.”
Chief Justice John Roberts looked to be the key vote, as he was in June when he voted with the court’s four liberal justices to strike down the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
This time, he said the attorney general might be justified to say DACA was illegal after a related ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that the Supreme Court upheld on a 4-4 vote in 2016.
“You’ve got a court of appeals decision affirmed by an equally divided Supreme Court,” Roberts said. “Can’t he just say that’s the basis on which I’m making this decision?”
The court’s ruling probably won’t be handed down until next spring, when the 2020 presidential election campaign is in full swing. Even if the court allows the program to be rescinded, most DACA recipients will retain the two-year protection until President Donald Trump or his Democratic successor takes the oath of office in January 2021.
The threat of losing their protected status prompted hundreds of DACA recipients to march, ride or fly to Washington for Tuesday’s argument and stage demonstrations outside the court.
Inside, the audience included University of California President Janet Napolitano, who authorized DACA as secretary of Homeland Security in 2012 and sued the Trump administration over its elimination; Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services; and Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat.
Until now, nearly every federal judge to hear the dispute has sided with the so-called DREAMers, leaving the program intact nationwide.
But the Supreme Court’s decision in June to hear the case signaled a potential win for Trump and the White House.