DACA: Supreme Court's Conservatives Ready to Overturn an Obama-era Program

By IndraStra Global News Team

By IndraStra Global News Team

Image Attribute: Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices were scheduled to hear arguments regarding the Trump administration’s bid to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in Washington, U.S., November 12, 2019. / Source: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

On November 12, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority seems to be in support of ending seven-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration program. Eventually giving a shot in the arm of Trump administration. 

Trump-appointed Solicitor General Noel Francisco said the administration thinks the DACA to protect law-abiding immigrants brought to the United States as children, is unlawful.

"They are dead wrong when they say that the DACA program adopted by the Obama administration was illegal," says Ted Olson, who served as solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration and is representing DACA plaintiffs in the Supreme Court. He duly pointed to programs similar to DACA that were put in place by every other president dating back to President Dwight Eisenhower. These programs granted temporary legal status, for instance, to 600,000 Cubans in the 1950s and '60s and 1.5 million other undocumented immigrants under another program in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

DACA policy, an executive branch memorandum, was announced by President Barack Obama on June 15, 2012. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting applications for the program on August 15, 2012. It was enacted to protect immigrants who as young people entered the U.S. illegally or overstayed a visa. These 660,000 migrants, mostly Hispanic, are known as "Dreamers". Unlike the proposed Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act)*, DACA does not provide a path to citizenship for recipients, known as Dreamers.  

Earlier in 2017, the White House tried to end the DACA policy as part of an immigration crackdown. A ruling led by a nine-member panel is due by June 2020, just before the U.S. presidential election.

Under current DACA policy, an individual may be considered for DACA if he or she has not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more “non-significant” misdemeanors not arising out of the same act, omission, or scheme of misconduct, or does not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety. Numbers of arrests alone do not necessarily disqualify a person from receiving DACA as a matter of discretion.

To read the complete transcript of the oral argument, Download the Pdf

Image Attribute: The nine-member panel to deliver its ruling on DACA by June 2020. L-R, Standing:  Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. L-R, Sitting: Justice Stephen Breyer, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Justice Samuel Alito / Photo date: November 2018 / Source: J. Scott Applewhite, AP

* DREAM Act, the bill was first introduced in the Senate on August 1, 2001, S. 1291 by United States Senators Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and has since been reintroduced several times but has failed to pass.