Trump Could Probably Kill DACA Legally But It’s Just More Fun The Other Way

John Roberts tried to make it easy for him.

Donald Trump experienced a minor inconvenience in his evil scheme to screw over Dreamers when the Supreme Court ruled against his administration's “arbitrary and capricious" attempt to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama executive order that gave some 700,000 people the chance to live and work here legally. It seemed fair because the Dreamers had committed no crime themselves, unlike most of Trump's 2016 campaign team.

The Supreme Court never actually said Trump couldn't go forth and multiply evil. Chief Justice John Roberts made clear in his opinion that Trump's gaggle of ghouls just needed to come up with a legally sound explanation other than “Mexicans bad. Trump smash!"

Trump promised to resubmit his DACA exam after Professor Roberts gave him an extension. It was the easiest community college test possible but Trump's team of unrivaled incompetence still failed.

Immigration lawyer Lily Axelrod has a great thread on Twitter about how the Trump administration is in "open defiance of the Supreme Court and several federal courts."

BREAKING / thread: Trump & DHS are now in open defiance of the Supreme Court and several federal courts. Despite be… https://t.co/ccuUTjjauq

— Lily S. Axelrod (@Lily S. Axelrod) 1595961441.0 

Trump was given an evil cheat sheet, but instead he's permitting only one-year DACA renewals instead of the current two as well as rejecting all new applications, which he can't do because it's against the law. I mean no one's really bothering to stop him when he breaks the law, especially not Senate Republicans, but this is over the top.

Chad Wolf, currently understudying the role of Department of Homeland Security secretary, confessed that the DHS had deliberately delayed processing new DACA applications and requests for advanced parole. He even put it in writing and everything.

Wolf declared in a memo fitting his unwarranted arrogance that he is hereby "rescinding the 2017 and 2018 memoranda, and making certain immediate changes to the DACA policy to facilitate" what he laughingly described as his "thorough consideration of how to address DACA in light of the Supreme Court's decision."

Those “immediate changes" defy federal law, which isn't whatever Trump says it is at the moment. Trump somehow thinks he can end the DACA policy pending his administration's “full consideration" of what to do about the policy, which he wanted to end in the first place. That was the whole point.

Worth noting in the memo: @DHS_Wolf admits that since the Supreme Court decision in June, DHS has purposefully dela… https://t.co/K8swEQDz1o

— Camila DeChalus (@Camila DeChalus) 1595963671.0 

WOLF: I have concluded that the DACA policy, at a minimum, presents serious policy concerns that may warrant its full rescission.

Nobody cares what you think, Mr. Ain't Been Confirmed To Shit. Seriously, the Supreme Court said as much in its decision:

We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies. The wisdom of those decisions is none of our concern. We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action.

Wolf further stated in his memo that "At the same time, I have concluded that fully rescinding the policy would be a significant administration decision that warrants additional careful consideration."

The Supreme Court already “concluded" for these dummies that they didn't comply with the procedural requirements. They just need to find a superficially non-racist reason for rescinding DACA that won't embarrass Chief Justice Roberts at cocktail parties. This is starting to feel like when The Simpsons are in witness protection and the feds can't get Homer to remember his new last name is “Thompson." 

The president couldn't even offer reporters Tuesday a coherent vision for what would happen to Dreamers if he succeeds in axing the program. He also seems to think that DACA is an actual person or maybe a sentient computer.

TRUMP: We are going tomake DACA happyand the DACA people and representatives happy, and we're also going to end up with a fantastic merit-based immigration system.

We all know when Trump says “merit-based immigration," he means white people from Norway and whatever someone like Einstein visa holder Melania Trump has to offer.

DACA is overwhelmingly popular. Even a majority of Republican s support permanent legal status to immigrants who entered the United States illegally when they were children. Conservatives might argue that this status should come from congressional legislation and not executive action, but Trump and the GOP have made no good-faith effort to pass an immigration bill that would achieve what DACA already does.

Trump also can't keep his racist mouth closed long enough to hide the fact that he doesn't care about “executive overreach." That concern is laughable on its face when you consider how Trump has governed. The courts won't consider his whims in a vacuum.

Meanwhile, 700,000 Americans remain in limbo.

[ Twitter / Politico ]

 Stephen Robinson on  Twitter.  

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