Photo courtesy of the National Review.
Summary: The Supreme Court will not hear a case that seeks to end DACA.
On Monday, the Supreme Court issued a blow to President Donald Trump when they refused to hear the White House administration’s appeal to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The decision was not a surprise to most because the Supreme Court often rejects cases that ask them to bypass lower courts.
According to NBC News, a federal judge had already ruled that the government was required to keep the immigration initiative, DACA. Trump’s administration filed an appeal to end it, but on Monday, the Supreme Court declined to review the case.
“Today’s Supreme Court action shows that rescinding DACA was not only legally questionable, but also unjust and cruel. The court’s action is welcome news, but only Congress can provide the permanent protection our Dreamers need and deserve,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, said.
Under the lower court’s ruling, the Department of Homeland Security must accept renewal applications for DACA participants. These participants, known as Dreamers, comprise of roughly 700,000 young people who were brought to the United States as children with their undocumented parents.
The current administration wanted to shut down DACA by March 5th, but according to NBC News, that deadline is now “largely meaningless.”
The Supreme Court decision will allow Congress to come up with an alternative solution for the controversial DACA program, and so far, bipartisan efforts have failed.
The DACA program allows undocumented immigrants who are under 16 and arrived by 2007 to stay in the United States without fear of deportation. They must renew their status every two years, and they are allowed to work and go to school.
On January 9, Judge William Alsup of San Francisco ruled that the Trump Administration could not end the program this year like they had announced last September. The Department of Justice sought to contest Alsup’s ruling, and it asked that the Supreme Court hear the appeals instead of the appeals court of California, a state which recently proclaimed itself a “sanctuary state” for undocumented immigrants.
After Monday’s decision, the White House remained firm on its stance that DACA was “unlawful.”
“The DACA program — which provides work permits and myriad government benefits to illegal immigrants en masse — is clearly unlawful,” the White House said. “The district judge’s decision to unilaterally re-impose a program that Congress had explicitly and repeatedly rejected is a usurpation of legislative authority…We look forward to having this case expeditiously heard by the appeals court and, if necessary, the Supreme Court, where we fully expect to prevail.”
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