On Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to end legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants.
The act was a shocking rebuke in the midst of his reelection campaign. Given the anti-immigrant rhetoric of his first presidential run in 2016 and little assertion about a wall, he was looking for Supreme Court support.
However, the justices rejected administration arguments that the 8-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program is illegal. Also, that courts have no role to play in reviewing the decision to end DACA.
The Supreme Court ruled that Trump had cut too many corners when it moved to revoke the Obama-era DACA program.
Trump and his team insisted that the Obama administration acted illegally when it created the program.
Leaving DACA in place means hundreds of thousands of young adult illegal immigrants can maintain protections, and more can apply.
However, the legal limbo that Congress has been unable to solve elevates it to a major issue in the 2020 presidential campaign.
“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action.
“Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients.”
The Department of Homeland Security can try again, he wrote.
