Pirate's Cove

The Trump administration needs some better lawyers. Or, did they not even bother to try on purpose?

Federal judge: Trump administration must accept new DACA applications

A D.C. federal judge has delivered the toughest blow yet to Trump administration efforts to end deportation protections for young undocumented immigrants, ordering the government to continue the Obama-era program and — for the first time since announcing it would end — reopen it to new applicants.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates on Tuesday called the government’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program “virtually unexplained” and therefore “unlawful.” However, he stayed his ruling for 90 days to give the Department of Homeland Security a chance to provide more solid reasoning for ending the program.

In his decision, Bates said the decision to phase out the program starting in March “was arbitrary and capricious because the Department failed adequately to explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful.”

It’s actually worse than that, as the Immigration Prof highlights two big passages from the ruling which provided the material for the above, and other news stories, one of which is from the summary

“Here, the Department’s decision to rescind DACA was predicated primarily on its legal judgment that the program was unlawful. That legal judgment was virtually unexplained, however, and so it cannot support the agency’s decision. And although the government suggests that DACA’s rescission was also predicated on the Department’s assessment of litigation risk, this consideration is insufficiently distinct from the agency’s legal judgment to alter the reviewability analysis. It was also arbitrary and capricious in its own right, and thus likewise cannot support the agency’s action. For these reasons, DACA’s rescission was unlawful and must be set aside.”

Apparently, it’s difficult for the administration lawyers to explain that even Obama stated that implementation of a program like DACA is un-Constitutional, and that these so-called Dreamers are present in contradiction of federal law. Furthermore, these illegal aliens are being given a break that others aren’t, and sucking up resources and money that should go to citizens and those who are lawfully present in the U.S.

Perhaps it was that Trump ended it with the thought that this should be turned over to the duly elected lawmakers, tasked by the Constitution to make the laws. It’s an insane ruling overall

The Trump administration said it is reviewing the decision. In a statement, the Justice Department pointed out that a similar Obama-era program for immigrant parents failed to survive a court challenge, and said ending DACA was part of its efforts to protect the border and enforce the rule of law.

Then they should use different lawyers. One also has to wonder if they were intentionally trying to spike Trump’s ending of DACA order.

(Front Page) The entire premise of DACA was that deportation was selective. The President has the power to decide whom to deport and whom not to deport. Now we’ve had multiple rulings by Federal judges which state, effectively, that Obama had the power to selectively deport illegal aliens, but not Trump.

And we have a court once again ruling that a unilateral move by Obama, with no legislative support, somehow has the rule of law. So that Trump not only has to abide by Obama’s selective deportation policy, but that he has to perpetuate it, thereby giving Obama authority over deportation policy in the Trump admin.

It may have been a George W Bush appointee who ruled this way, but, there were plenty of illegal immigration supporters in his administration, since Bush 43 was himself. Regardless, it looks like the Trump admin lawyers just aren’t putting the effort in. Yes, it should be easy: “your honor, these people are here illegally. Federal law says so. We have no legal rationale to protect them.” But, it’s not that easy in court.

Bates called the move “particularly egregious” given the hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients, young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children, protected under the program over its five years. Given how many people’s lives were built on the protections from DACA, Bates said, “its barebones legal interpretation was doubly insufficient.”

That’s not a legal decision. It’s a political argument.

We’ll see where this goes from here. Of course, this wouldn’t be necessary had the Democrats played ball in Congress doing something on DACA. But, they wanted all the reward without giving up anything.

Crossed at First Street Journal.