Government

Judge Allows Trump To Continue Making Migrant Crisis A Thing If He Wants

Trump is the only one who doesn't have a plan for the humanitarian crisis at the border.

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It is important for people to remember that nearly every Trump immigration “crisis” was created or exacerbated by Donald Trump. He, quite literally, cancels programs designed to process people seeking to legally enter the country, replaces them with nothing, then says that people are trying to come here “illegally” and threatens to shoot them. Trump smashes things, then argues that the Democrats have no plan to fix it.

People sue him to stop him, but usually the damage is already done.

Such is the case with the Central American Minors program. This was an Obama-era program to deal with the “caravan” of refugees fleeing Central America. You might have heard about this “caravan” if you watched Fox News in 2018. Though if you only watched Fox News, you might think that we’re talking about a group of Immortan Joe’s War Boys coming to steal wives.

The Obama program was a legal response to a humanitarian crisis. It provided a pathway for people to apply for refugee status, and if they didn’t meet refugee status, they could still apply to be settled in the United States for a “parole” period. It wasn’t a perfect program, but it was providing at least some relief for people desperate to escape political and economic hardship in their home countries.

Trump, predictably, shut down the program soon after taking office. He gave no reason for shutting it down. He replaced it with nothing. He didn’t even announce that he shut it down until almost a year later. He refused entry to people who had already been approved under the program. He’s SUCH A F****** ASSHOLE who does this crap ALL THE TIME AND NOBODY STOPS HIM!

Sorry.

Trump made no provision for handling the flood of refugees heading to this country… until he needed them to scare white people in an election year. Then it became a “problem” with no solution other than placing troops at the border and shooting tear gas into crowds that included unarmed children.

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People sued, and yesterday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler issued a decision that basically said Trump got away with it this time. Plaintiffs argued that Trump’s lack of notice or reasons for ending the program constituted an arbitrary and capricious law, but Judge Beeler said that Trump had a reason: he didn’t like the program.

Beeler jumps through a lot of hoops to distinguish this case from the DACA decisions. In the DACA cases, Trump was found to have acted arbitrarily and capriciously when he ended the program. But here, Beeler determines that Trump’s boo-immigrants policy change was sufficient grounds to end the program. Beeler determines that Trump was willing to take the political consequences (if any) for changing the policy, unlike the DACA case where he falsely argued that the program did something it did not.

Except, Beeler’s reading seems obviously wrong given that Trump didn’t even announce that he ended the program until months after it was canceled. Plaintiffs argued that the time gap was a “secret shutdown” which denied them due process rights.

Beeler rejected the due process argument, and called other claims arising from the secret shutdown moot because, well, it ain’t secret anymore. Essentially, Beeler is letting Trump get away with arbitrarily ending a crisis management program in secret because Trump shooting off tear gas at toddlers is one policy choice among many.

The judge didn’t throw out all of the plaintiffs’ claims. Trump also tried to deny entry to people who had already been approved under the Obama program but hadn’t yet made it to the United States when Trump shut it down. Beeler preserved those claims.

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But, if say you are a person who only resettled in America because you thought your parents would be able to follow you under the same program, you are out of luck. Trump won and a court decided that Trump’s animus towards non-white immigrants is a legally sufficient reason to change immigration laws.

Never let some virulent red hat wearing asshole tell you that liberals “don’t have a plan” for dealing with the “immigration crisis.” First of all, it’s not an immigration crisis, it’s a humanitarian one. And secondly, WE LITERALLY HAD A PLAN. Trump just smashed it and left nothing in its place.

The man can’t “build” anything. All he can do bulldoze the work of better men.

Trump Administration Can’t Dodge Central American Child Refugee Claims [Courthouse News]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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