Supreme Court deals Donald Trump another stunning blow, rejecting his bid to end ‘Dreamers’ immigration protections
People take part during a march in protest of president Trump’s decision on DACA. (Kena Betancur/VIEWpress/Corbis via Getty Images)
In yet another devastating blow to Donald Trump, the US Supreme Court Thursday (June 18) rejected his administration’s bid to end a program protecting around 700,000 young immigrants, known as Dreamers, from deportation.
To Trump, the commitment to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was a cornerstone of his government’s pledges. But the courts dealt a brutal broadside to this by saying the president could no longer “immediately terminate” the program.
Justices voted five-to-four to uphold lower court rulings that rescinding the five-year-old programme was unlawful, Sky News reported.
Considering that one estimate suggests that around 36,000 LGBT+ people may be enrolled in the DACA program, it’s truly been a victorious week for queer rights. Being that on Monday the courts delivered a victory for the LGBT+ community by blocking the administration’s efforts to strip workplace protections for gay and trans staff.
Supreme Court strikes down Donald Trump’s bid to demolish DACA.
The court’s liberal bloc of four justices was joined by conservative John Roberts Jr who delivered the majority opinion.
“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” the chief justice wrote, who was also in the majority for the landmark LGBT+ civil rights ruling.
“We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action.”
He dubbed the administration’s actions as “arbitrary and capricious” under a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act.
With the end of the Department of Homeland Security v Regents of the University of California, Trump took to Twitter to blast the decision.
These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020
But a result of the ruling, the lives of hundreds of thousands of immigrants – many young Hispanic adults born in Mexico – enrolled in DACA will remain protected from deportation.
For queer youth enrolled in DACA, many will no doubt breathe a sigh of relief tonight. The programme provided economic security and bolster their educational attainment, no longer rattled by the threat of deportation to countries that many do not even remember.
Many queer Dreamers on DACA pleaded that pulling the program would certainly plunge many into homelessness, according to a press release from the True Colors Fund.
Pro-immigration activists gather in front of the US Supreme Court on April 18, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Many of them, the youth homelessness group said, would have been sent back to countries where anti-LGBT+ laws and views are commonplace.
The program was first introduced by Barack Obama in 2012. It allowed young people brought to the US as children to apply for a temporary status that shields them from deportation and allowed them to work.
The two-year-long status, while renewable, was not a pathway to citizenship. Trump announced September 2017 he planned to peel back the campaign, and his, as well as his government’s justifications, were, to the Supreme Court, insufficient.
Now Trump’s swarth of officials but seek to find new, more robust ways to justify the deportation of Dreamers to the lower courts.
