Done first: It makes no sense to claim that Trump has been trying to support DACA recipients better than Democrats. Trump has repeatedly tried to end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) despite Democratic objections. And Trump has rejected several Democratic proposals to save the program despite being offered concessions on his own priorities, such as a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico.
United We Dream, an immigration advocacy group, also says Trump’s claim that it has been better than Democrats for DACA recipients is false.
“I think if someone is working to protect people, they don’t use them as a bargaining chip … which is what they’ve really done from the beginning,” said Sanaa Abrar, defense director for United We Dream. “No conversation about DACA recipients has come out of that White House without also, in the same sentence in many cases, a demand for an unnecessary wall or permanent changes to our immigration system as we know it.”
Trump also tweeted: “According to the decision, Democrats cannot make DACA citizens. They did not win anything!”
Done first: The Supreme Court said nothing about whether DACA recipients can become citizens, be it by Democrats, Republicans, or a bipartisan effort.
“There is nothing in the Court’s opinion that prevents Congress from providing a path to citizenship for DACA beneficiaries. The case had nothing to do with citizenship and this issue was not addressed by the Court,” Angela Banks , a law professor at Arizona State University, said in an email.
The DACA program has never included a direct path to citizenship for enrollees. For DACA recipients (or any other group of undocumented immigrants) to have a path to citizenship, Congress would have to pass, and the president would have to sign legislation, for example, the American Dreams and Promises Act, that the The Controlled House was passed last year, but the Republican-controlled Senate has not voted.
“There is nothing in the DACA decision that prevents a future Congress from legalizing the state of the Dreamers and putting them on the road to citizenship. I have no idea what they are talking about, unless it means that a future Democratic President does not could do it”. her own initiative, which has always been true, “said Cristina Rodríguez, a law professor at Yale University, in an email.
Done first: These claims about the court’s intentions are more subjective than the others, which is why we didn’t call them completely false, but Trump was taking an overly optimistic turn to what happened. The Supreme Court did not explicitly ask the administration to “resubmit” anything, although it did make it clear that it was free to do so. And while the court said the Department of Homeland Security has the power to end DACA, giving Trump ammunition for a possible future attempt, the Trump administration clearly lost this particular case: its attempt to end DACA was quickly rejected.
“The administration lost in its effort to end DACA. It may try again, but the first attempt to end the program failed,” said Banks, an Arizona state professor.
DACA’s decision did not refer to the legality of the program itself. Rather, this case was about whether the Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that governs how agencies make regulations, in the way that it handled its attempted termination of the program.
A 5-4 majority of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal judges found that the administration violated the act by making an “arbitrary and capricious” decision without a “reasoned explanation.”
“The dispute in court is not whether DHS can rescind DACA. All parties agree that it is. The dispute is primarily about the procedure the agency followed to do so,” wrote Roberts. He wrote that the court was referring the matter to the Department of Homeland Security “so that it can consider the problem again.”
Roberts’ words effectively gave the Trump administration the green light to try to produce better reasoning to end the program. But there was no direct request from the court to do so, and the administration’s new motives would surely be challenged by DACA supporters, sparking yet another legal battle of months or years.
Rodríguez said the court is not asking the administration to resubmit. Rather, “the Court is saying that the administration can resubmit if it wishes, again trying to terminate the DACA in accordance with the procedural parameters that the Court has established. Whether to try again is up to the administration.”
CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez and Ariane de Vogue contributed to this article.
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