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The Justice Department announced today that it will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that the department would accept no new applications, and ordered the program into an “orderly wind down.” The Trump administration is giving Congress six months to “save” the program.
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Sessions repeatedly referred to DACA as “unconstitutional” and said “the policy is vulnerable to… legal and constitutional challenges.”
“It is my duty to ensure that the laws of the United States are enforced and that the constitutional order is upheld,” Sessions said in explaining his rationale. “Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional executive overreach of authority by the executive branch.”
The fact is: Donald Trump has made it a priority to be mean to immigrants and their children. The people who voted for Donald Trump knew about that before they voted for him, and he won the election. If you supported this president, then you supported deporting children who didn’t do anything wrong. If it sounds like I feel morally superior to you, I do.
But another inconvenient fact is that DACA always rested on shaky legal ground because it was done through executive action. Nearly anything done through executive action can be undone by the next executive. Donald Trump has thus far shown a total inability to get anything done that requires legislation. All he can do is swab White-Out on any papers Barack Obama left lying around the office. That is the extent of his legislative prowess.
And so there is an opportunity here. The only reason President Obama pushed through DACA with an executive order is because Republicans in Congress decided that black men don’t get to be president. Well, now Obama is gone. Congressional Republicans don’t have the excuse of standing up to Kenyans. Now we have a chance of getting DACA through normal legislation, which is how our system is supposed to work in the first place.
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Obama saved Republicans from taking a tough vote that pitted basic human decency against the rabid bigotry of their base. Trump has now screwed Republicans who don’t want to be known as the party who deports children, but also don’t want to piss off white guys who lack empathy.
Congress can’t “save” DACA so much as they can DO THEIR JOB and reform our immigration policies so that children who were brought here by their parents are not EXILED back to a country they don’t remember living in.
Donald Trump is keeping his campaign promise to racists. They’re going to love him for it. Congressional Republicans can go buy some tiki torches and join the party, OR they can risk pissing off their base to do the right thing.
I’m sure it’s a tough choice for them. And I bet that right now, they wish they had Barack Obama back. He did a lot to cover their asses.
Trump Ends DACA Program, No New Applications Accepted [NBC News]
Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.