U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has finally issued official guidance on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program—but it’s not about fully reopening it to new applicants as ordered by the courts. Instead, the guidance implements the changes announced by unconfirmed and unlawfully appointed acting Department of Homeland Security Sec. Chad Wolf late last month, which rejects first-time applicants, those pesky courts be damned.
Immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice noted in a statement that USCIS publicly announced its implementation of Unlawful Chad’s unlawful changes on the same day that Republicans kicked off their literal scream-fest to renominate impeached president Donald Trump: “On Day One of its convention, the Republican Party portrayed itself as the ‘law and order’ party. But as we have learned the hard way, it’s critical to watch what they do and not what they say. Take the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on DACA, and you’ll see what ‘law and order’ means.”
“Yesterday, Trump’s USCIS issued a new memo authored by Acting Secretary of DHS Chad Wolf that ignores the recent Supreme Court DACA decision and is in open defiance of a subsequent federal court ruling mandating the administration open the program to new applicants,” America’s Voice said. But the group notes that when Unlawful Chad isn’t even supposed to be at DHS according to a congressional watchdog (same goes to his unlawful and unconfirmed deputy, the very strange Ken Cuccinelli), his DACA memo is just as unlawful as his appointment.
“Chad Wolf is illegally serving as Acting DHS Secretary and his anti-DACA memo has no legal standing,” America’s Voice continued. “Earlier this month, a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the senior leadership of DHS, starting with Acting Secretary Chad Wolf, are not legally eligible to serve in their current roles and were unlawfully appointed. Therefore, Wolf’s DACA memo should carry no weight.”
The administration announcement just a day later that Unlawful Chad was finally getting officially nominated to lead the department after being there in an acting capacity for nearly a year now is “[p]robably because the White House is concerned about the validity of his current appointment—and the collateral consequences if it's thrown out,” University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck tweeted. “Hard to see Wolf’s sudden nomination as anything but a capitulation,” tweeted the New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer. “Legal experts & former DHS officials had long said he was serving unlawfully. Then, earlier this month, the GAO concurred in a report that Wolf’s DHS attacked as the machinations of a pro-Democrat deep-stater.”
Wolf and Cuccinelli should have handed in their resignations already, instead the former is getting rewarded with an attempt at a permanent position (that hopefully won’t be permanent come November). And remember that among the things getting lost here is the fact that undocumented young people and their allies won an absolutely historic court ruling at the Supreme Court more than two months ago, 68 days to be exact, and the Trump administration is just openly defying that decision. It’s an absolute national disgrace.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement received by Daily Kos that the USCIS announcement “is exactly what we can expect from a Trump presidency: relentless, costly, and unbelievably cruel attacks on our immigrant communities.”
