The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program stands, for now, following a stunning decision from the Supreme Court on Thursday. As with the historic LGBTQ ruling earlier this week, Chief Justice John Roberts was a key player, joining the four liberal justices on the court to make the 5-4 majority vote. But, today, he actually wrote the majority opinion—a direct rebuke to impeached president Donald Trump, former Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and Stephen Miller.
Of course, it’s also important to note why Roberts voted how he did. “The court’s 5–4 ruling is a resounding humanitarian victory,” Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern writes. “But Roberts did not save DACA because his heart bleeds for young immigrants who faced banishment to a foreign country. He saved DACA because the Trump administration bungled every step of its attempted repeal, hoping the courts would ignore its sloppy, dishonest corner-cutting.”
“As a general rule, the executive branch must provide a reasoned explanation when it seeks to make a policy change that falls within its lawful discretion,” Vox explained last year. But in its rush to deport immigrants who have known no other nation but this one as their home, officials failed to do this. That’s just one thing that came back to bite them in the ass, Stern explains. ”Jeff Sessions deserves the bulk of the blame for botching DACA rescission,” he tweeted. “Everyone agrees the Trump administration could have rescinded the program lawfully, but Sessions' ineptitude paved the way for today's SCOTUS decision.”
Stern says in his must-read piece that Roberts writes that former acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke “could have ’considered more accommodating termination dates for recipients caught in the middle of a time-bounded commitment, to allow them to, say, graduate from their course of study, complete their military service, or finish a medical treatment regimen.’ But Duke did no such thing,” Stern writes. “She simply ignored the weighty costs to real people and the nation at large. By doing so, Roberts held, she acted in an unlawfully arbitrary and capricious way.”
What this means is that Robert has given the administration a way to try to end DACA again lawfully (even if immorally), and in complete opposition to widespread public opinion favoring allowing undocumented youth to stay right here. Stern writes “it is a careful, circumscribed ruling, one that gives Trump the power to end DACA if his administration can figure out how to do it legally. There’s little doubt that, if the president wins a second term, he will rescind DACA the right way, once again putting Dreamers in the crosshairs.”
In a number of tweets Thursday complaining about the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump claimed that he’s “asking for a legal solution on DACA, not a political one, consistent with the rule of law.” But let’s not forget about all the times he rejected bipartisan solutions (including one that would have given him $25 billion for his damned wall), the fact that he has every ability to keep DACA going as its already been going for eight years now, and the fact that the House of Representatives already passed legislation more than a year ago. If he truly wants a bill, he should tweet his buddy Mitch.
DACA is, of course, an important lifeline for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants, and it staying in place for now is a historic victory for so many families. Today has been a much-needed and cathartic win for them. But they need more. Congress must pass permanent protections that help families without hurting them, whether the administration throws in the towel on DACA or keeps pursuing its misguided mission to separate even more families.