Supreme Court sharply divided over Trump's DACA repealBY JOHN KRUZEL - 11/12/19
The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared sharply divided over President Trump's move to end Obama-era protections for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children, as the justices heard oral arguments in one of the most closely watched cases of the term.
At issue is the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which grants deferral from deportation to nearly 700,000 undocumented young adult immigrants.
The justices seemed divided on two overlapping issues they are being asked to resolve: whether the courts have the power to second-guess Trump's action, and if Trump's DACA repeal was lawful.
The justices’ questions during oral arguments suggested that the court may break down along familiar ideological lines in the case.
Members of the court’s conservative wing appeared wary of allowing courts to review the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to begin phasing out the program. Their questions during oral arguments also suggested many conservative justices appeared to think the administration had supplied legally sound reasons for eliminating DACA.
Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, was perhaps the most closely watched in the case as a potential swing vote.
Both Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer, a Clinton appointee, also seemed unsure about the question of whether the court had to power to review the decision.
“I’m saying honestly,” Breyer said, “I’m struggling.”
But some of the court’s liberal members seemed inclined to view the DACA repeal as falling within the court's purview, and they questioned whether the Trump administration had provided an adequate justification for their decision to terminate the program.
Theodore Olson, a former George W. Bush solicitor general and one of two lawyers arguing to preserve DACA, seemed to gain ground with members of the court’s liberal wing during arguments.
He told the justices that the Trump administration’s earliest stated reason for the rollback — that DACA was illegal — let administration officials upend the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who relied on the deportation relief program.
The politically charged case sparked a day of drama in Washington, with immigration rights advocates gathering on the steps of the court, where they urged the justices to save the program.
Trump also weighed in on the case just hours before the justices met, blasting DACA recipients, commonly known as "Dreamers."
“Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from ‘angels.’ Some are very tough, hardened criminals,” Trump said in a tweet.
And the president told the justices that if they let his repeal stand he would work with Congress to pass legislation to address the issue. “If Supreme Court remedies with overturn, a deal will be made with Dems for them to stay!"
The oral arguments were only the latest front in a long contentious fight over the program.
The case traces back to 2012, when former President Obama established DACA through executive action. Roughly 660,000 people are now enrolled in the program, which grants a renewable two-year deferral from deportation, and makes applicants eligible for work permits, driver’s licenses and health insurance.
President Trump, who campaigned on a promise to end Obama’s “illegal executive amnesties,”
Announced plans in in fall 2017 to rescind the program. The move was met with swift legal challenges. Federal lower court judges in three cases sided against the Trump administration.
Before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, lawyers for the Trump administration said the lower courts erred. Solicitor General Noel Francisco argued that the courts lack jurisdiction to review the repeal, and that their decisions should be vacated. If the justices decide the repeal is reviewable, Francisco argued, the administration's decision should be upheld as based on legally justified reasons.
Francisco sought to persuade the court that the Trump administration rescinded DACA not only because it believed the program was illegal, but also for policy reasons.
The agency's rationale was spelled out in two Department of Homeland Security memos, he said, the first of which argued that Obama engaged in “an unconstitutional exercise of authority” when he set up the program in 2012 through executive action. A second memo provided additional policy reasons, including the administration's stance that a repeal of DACA would deter future illegal immigration.
One question that arose during arguments was whether the second Trump administration memo was an after-the-fact effort to rationalize the controversial decision.
The Supreme Court’s decision will be guided by a federal statute that concerns how much decisionmaking power federal agencies have, the Administrative Procedure Act. The justices will weigh if the courts have jurisdiction, and if Trump's repeal is legally justified, or if it was “arbitrary and capricious,” and thus illegal under the act.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/470075-supreme-court-sharply-divided-over-trumps-daca-repeal
