President Donald Trump said he will restart the process of ending President Barack Obama’s DACA amnesty for 700,000 illegal immigrants.
The announcement came after the U.S. Supreme Court’s surprise decision to block Trump’s cancellation of the amnesty, even though it also admitted that Trump has the power to end it.
“As President of the United States, I am asking for a legal solution on DACA, not a political one, consistent with the rule of law,” he tweeted Thursday afternoon. “The Supreme Court is not willing to give us one, so now we have to start this process all over again.”
Trump added:
The [court’s] DACA decision, while a highly political one, and seemingly not based on the law, gives the President of the United States far more power than EVER anticipated. Nevertheless, I will only act in the best interests of the United States of America!
The five-judge majority on the court ruled that Trump’s deputies had not correctly justified on paper their original decision to end President Barack Obama’s amnesty and award of work permits to the adult children of illegal immigrants.
The judges said the 2017 process was inadequate, and they also said that a more extensive and detailed process in 2018 could not be considered in their judicial review of the cancellation.
The decision by four Democrat judges and Chief Justice John Roberts was silent on many critical questions. For example, the court did not explain whether Obama’s award of work permits was illegal, or if Obama’s deputies had justified correctly their decision to help illegals amid the post-2008 recession, or what steps Trump’s deputies should take to redo the process.
“The majority’s holding creates perverse incentives, particularly for outgoing administrations,” said the dissent by Judges Clarence Thomas, Samual Alito, and Neil Gorsuch. They continued:
Under the auspices of today’s decision, administrations can bind their successors by unlawfully adopting significant legal changes through Executive Branch agency memoranda. Even if the agency lacked authority to effectuate the changes, the changes cannot be undone by the same agency in a successor administration unless the successor provides sufficient policy justifications to the satisfaction of this Court.
In other words, the majority erroneously holds that the agency is not only permitted, but required, to continue administering unlawful programs that it inherited from a previous administration.
Thomas wrote:
Today’s decision must be recognized for what it is: an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision. The Court could have made clear that the solution respondents seek must come from the Legislative Branch. Instead, the majority has decided to prolong DHS’ initial overreach by providing a stopgap measure of its own. In doing so, it has given the green light for future political battles to be fought in this Court rather than where they rightfully belong—the political branches. Such timidity forsakes the Court’s duty to apply the law according to neutral principles, and the ripple effects of the majority’s error will be felt throughout our system of self-government.