Federal Judge Rules Against Trump in DACA Decision
A federal judge ruled against the Trump administration on Friday and ordered it to re-start the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows people brought into the U.S. illegally as children to remain in the country.
U.S. District Court Judge John Bates, however, did not order immediate action. He set a re-start date of August 23, based on the assumption the Trump administration will appeal his ruling, CNN reported.
Friday’s decision is not the only court case that could reshape DACA. On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen will hear a request from Texas to halt DACA until the issue has been decided in the federal court system, The Texas Tribune reported.
NBC News reported that the Justice Department is siding with Texas, and hopes to use a successful Texas-based ruling to block other decisions and send the future of DACA to the Supreme Court.
Trump put the brakes on DACA last September, which Bates on Friday said “was arbitrary and capricious” with legal judgment that was “inadequately explained,” The Hill reported
The case was an appeal of a previous decision in April that claimed the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to rescind DACA was “unlawful,” Fox News reported.
https://twitter.com/BuckSexton/status/1025500619975675904
Much of the ruling Bates issued Friday took issue with the rationale offered by DHS for ending DACA.
“For the reasons explained below, the government’s motion will be denied,” Bates wrote in his ruling. “Although the Nielsen Memo purports to offer further explanation for DHS’s decision to rescind DACA, it fails to elaborate meaningfully on the agency’s primary rationale for its decision: the judgment that the policy was unlawful and unconstitutional.”
The memo from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen presented “additional ‘policy’ grounds” to undo DACA, Bates wrote, but “most of these simply repackage legal arguments previously made,” making them “‘insufficiently independent from the agency’s evaluation of DACA’s legality’ to preclude judicial review or to support the agency’s decision.”
“The Court did not hold in its prior opinion, and it does not hold today, that DHS lacks the statutory or constitutional authority to rescind the DACA program,” Bates wrote, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Rather, the Court simply holds that if DHS wishes to rescind the program — or to take any other action, for that matter — it must give a rational explanation for its decision.”
More than 700,000 individuals, many who are now adults, are enrolled in DACA.
President Donald Trump has offered ambivalent public statements on DACA. Although he sought to scrap the program, the date for its demise came and went without any action, Fox News reported.
“DACA is dead because the Democrats didn’t care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon… No longer works. Must build Wall and secure our borders with proper Border legislation. Democrats want No Borders, hence drugs and crime!” Trump tweeted in April.
DACA is dead because the Democrats didn’t care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon… No longer works. Must build Wall and secure our borders with proper Border legislation. Democrats want No Borders, hence drugs and crime!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2018
Trump has said he wants to find a way to avoid deporting those in DACA, and has blamed Democrats for a lack of action to find a solution.
Two House bills are pending that would protect DACA enrollees from being deported.
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