#Supreme Court rejects Trump administration’s bid to end DACA

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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts
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The US Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the White House from ending the Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants — dubbed “Dreamers” — from being deported, a blow to President Trump’s immigration policy.

The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld lower court rulings that found Trump’s move to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program established by President Barack Obama in 2012 was unlawful.

The justices said the Trump administration failed to give adequate justification for terminating the program that protects nearly 700,000 young immigrants.

The ruling keeps the program intact.

“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,“ he wrote. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action. Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients.”

Roberts said the Department of Homeland Security can try again.

The court’s four liberal justices joined Roberts in the decision.

Three of the four conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — dissented, arguing DACA was illegal since it was created by the Obama administration. Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued his own dissension.

DACA covers people who have been in the United States since they were children and are in the country illegally.

In some cases, they have no memory of any home other than the US.

The program grew out of an impasse over a comprehensive immigration bill between Congress and the Obama administration in 2012. Obama decided to formally protect people from deportation while also allowing them to work legally in the US.

The Department of Homeland Security has continued to process two-year DACA renewals so that hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients have protections stretching beyond the election and even into 2022.

The Supreme Court fight over DACA played out in a kind of legal slow motion. The administration first wanted the justices to hear and decide the case by June 2018.

The justices said no.

The Justice Department returned to the court later in 2018, but the justices did nothing for more than seven months before agreeing a year ago to hear arguments. Those took place in November and more than seven months elapsed before the court’s decision.

With Post wires