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The Supreme Court's conservative majority signaled support on Tuesday for P...

ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES!!! For all those who said Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate so you didn't vote, this is what happens.

Supreme Court Appears Ready to Let Trump End DACA Program

The justices are considering whether the Trump administration can shut down a program that shields about 700,000 young immigrants from deportation.

By Adam Liptak | Published Nov. 12, 2019 Updated 1:26 PM ET | New York Times | Posted November 12, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday appeared ready to side with the Trump administration in its efforts to shut down a program protecting about 700,000 young immigrants known as “Dreamers.”

The court’s liberal justices probed the administration’s justifications for ending the program, expressing skepticism about its rationales for doing so. But other justices indicated that they would not second-guess the administration’s reasoning and, in any event, considered its explanations sufficient.

Still, there was agreement among the justices that the young people who signed up for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, were sympathetic and that they and their families, schools and employers had relied on it in good faith.

The arguments in the case, one of the most important of the term, addressed presidential power over immigration, a signature issue for President Trump and a divisive one, especially as it has played out in the debate over DACA, a program that has broad, bipartisan support.

The program, announced by President Barack Obama in 2012, allows young people brought to the United States as children to apply for a temporary status that shields them from deportation and allows them to work. The status lasts for two years and is renewable, but it does not provide a path to citizenship.

In the past, Mr. Trump has praised the program’s goals and suggested he wanted to preserve it. “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military?” he asked in a 2017 Twitter post.

But as the court took up its future on Tuesday, Mr. Trump struck a different tone. “Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from ‘angels,’” he wrote on Twitter. “Some are very tough, hardened criminals.”

In fact, the program has strict requirements. To be eligible for DACA status, applicants had to show that they had committed no serious crimes, had arrived in the United States before they turned 16 and were no older than 30, had lived in the United States for at least the previous five years, and were a high school graduate or a veteran.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the DACA recipients were justified in relying on Mr. Trump’s earlier statements, which she paraphrased. “They were safe under him,” she said, “and he would find a way to keep them here.”

The roots of the decision to shut down the program figured in the argument, as the justices parsed two sets of rationales from successive heads of the Department of Homeland Security.

After contentious debates among his aides, Mr. Trump announced in September 2017 that he would wind down the program. He gave only a single reason for doing so, saying that creating or maintaining the program was beyond the legal power of any president.

“I do not favor punishing children,” Mr. Trump said in his formal announcement of the termination. But, he added, “the program is unlawful and unconstitutional and cannot be successfully defended in court.”

That decision was reflected in bare-bones memo from Elaine C. Duke, then the acting secretary of homeland security. She offered no policy reasons for the move.

Theodore B. Olson, a lawyer for the DACA recipients, said the memo allowed the administration to avoid taking political heat on the issue. “The administration did not want to own the decision,” he said.

Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco, arguing for the administration, disagreed. “We own it,” he said.

Mr. Francisco pointed to a second memo, issued last year by Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary at the time. It mostly relied on the earlier rationales in Ms. Duke’s memo, but added one more, about the importance of projecting a message “that leaves no doubt regarding the clear, consistent and transparent enforcement of the immigration laws against all classes and categories of aliens.”

That policy justification, Mr. Francisco said, was sufficient even if the administration was mistaken in its legal rationale.

Mr. Olson disagreed. “You have to have a rational explanation,” he said. “It must make sense. It must be contemporaneous.”

Michael J. Mongan, California’s solicitor general, who argued in favor of the program, called Ms. Nielsen’s new rationale “boilerplate.”

The Trump administration’s argument that the program was unlawful was based on a 2015 ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans. But that decision concerned a different, much larger program. Lower courts have ruled that the two programs differed in important ways, undermining the administration’s legal analysis.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said on Tuesday that it was impossible to disentangle the administration’s legal rationale from its later policy justification. “We don’t know how she would respond,” Justice Ginsburg said of Ms. Nielsen, “if there were a clear recognition that there is nothing illegal about DACA.”

The justices have examined the Trump administration’s justifications for its initiatives on immigration in other cases.

In 2018, the court upheld Mr. Trump’s order limiting travel from several predominantly Muslim nations, relying on the justifications set out in a presidential proclamation and refusing to consider statements from Mr. Trump concerning his desire to impose a “Muslim ban.”

In June, however, the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s rationale for adding a citizenship question to the census. “The sole stated reason” for adding the question, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority, “seems to have been contrived.”

In a Supreme Court brief, the administration said the DACA cases, including the Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, No. 18-587, were different.

“The courts below erred,” the brief said, “in second-guessing D.H.S.’s entirely rational judgment to stop facilitating ongoing violations of federal law on a massive scale.”

On Tuesday, the justices frequently referred to the DACA recipients themselves. “I hear a lot of facts, sympathetic facts, that you’ve put out there, and they speak to all of us,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch told Mr. Olson.

But Justice Gorsuch said he had doubts about whether it was the role of the Supreme Court to review the administration’s decision to terminate the program.

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Supreme Court leans toward Trump on ending 'Dreamers' immigrant program

By Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung | Published November 12, 2019, 1:07 PM ET | Reuters | Posted Nov. 12, 2019 |

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled support on Tuesday for President Donald Trump’s bid to kill a program that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants - dubbed “Dreamers” - who entered the United States illegally as children, even as liberal justices complained that the move would destroy lives.

The court’s ideological divisions were on full display as it heard the administration’s appeal of lower court rulings that blocked the Republican president’s 2017 plan to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, created in 2012 by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.

DACA currently shields about 660,000 immigrants - mostly Hispanic young adults - from deportation and provides them work permits, though not a path to citizenship. Trump’s bid to end it is part of his hardline immigration polices.

Conservative justices questioned whether courts even have the power to review Trump’s action and also seemed to reject the views of lower courts that his administration had failed to properly justify ending DACA, a program Obama implemented after Congress failed to pass bipartisan immigration reform.

The court’s 5-4 conservative majority includes two Trump appointees - Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh - who both indicated support for the president’s action.

Liberal justices emphasized the large number of individuals, businesses and others who have relied on the program and indicated that the administration did not sufficiently weigh those concerns. Justice Sonia Sotomayor referred to Trump’s decision as a “choice to destroy lives” and indicated that his administration had failed to supply the required policy rationale to make the move lawful.

Kavanaugh said he assumed that the administration’s analysis of the impact rescinding DACA would have on individuals was a “very considered decision.”

“I mean, this is a serious decision. We all agree on that,” Kavanaugh added.

A ruling is due by the end of June.

Trump’s administration has argued that Obama exceeded his constitutional powers when he created DACA by executive action, bypassing Congress. Trump has made his hardline immigration policies - cracking down on legal and illegal immigration and pursuing construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border - a centerpiece of his presidency and 2020 re-election campaign.

The challengers who sued to stop Trump’s action included a collection of states such as California and New York, people currently protected by the program and civil rights groups.

Even if Trump were to lose this time, his administration would be free to come up with new reasons to end the program in the future, a point picked up by Gorsuch.

“What good would another five years of litigation over the adequacy of that explanation serve?” Gorsuch asked.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who could be the pivotal vote in deciding the case, likewise indicated he was satisfied with the administration’s rationale.

Roberts, however, had appeared sympathetic to Trump in a case this year on the administration’s attempt to add a contentious citizenship question to the 2020 census - a move critics said was intended to deter immigrants from being included in the nation’s official population count. Roberts cast the decisive vote against the president in a 5-4 ruling.

TRAVEL BAN

The Supreme Court previously handed Trump a major victory on immigration policy last year when it upheld as lawful his travel ban blocking people from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, finding that the president has broad discretion to set such policy.

Lower court rulings in California, New York and the District of Columbia left DACA in place, finding that Trump’s move to rescind it was likely “arbitrary and capricious” and violated a U.S. law called the Administrative Procedure Act.

The young people protected under DACA, Obama said, were raised and educated in the United States, grew up as Americans and often know little about their countries of origin.

Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, wondered if the court should take into account the fact that Trump has said he would look after “Dreamers.”

“He hasn’t” taken care of them, she said. “And that, I think, is something to be considered before you rescind a policy.”

Much of the administration’s reasoning was based on then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ conclusion in 2017 that the program was unlawful. Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pressed U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco, who argued the case for the administration, on the government’s reliance on the assertion that DACA was unlawful.

The administration could have just said “we don’t like DACA and we’re taking responsibility for that instead of trying to put the blame on the law,” Ginsburg said.

Francisco, who also argued the travel ban case, said the administration was not trying to shirk responsibility for ending a popular program.

“We own this,” Francisco said, referring to Trump’s decision to kill DACA.

Trump has given mixed messages about the “Dreamers,” saying in 2017 that he has “a great love” for them even as he sought to kill the program that protected them from deportation.

Trump on Tuesday took to Twitter to attack “many” DACA recipients as “tough, hardened criminals,” without offering evidence, and again dangled the possibility of a deal with congressional Democrats to allow people protected under the program to remain in the United States. Trump has never proposed a detailed replacement for DACA.

Several hundred DACA supporters gathered outside the court on a gray and chilly Tuesday morning, chanting, banging drums and carrying signs that read “home is here” and “defend DACA.”

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Trump administration tells Supreme Court it owns termination of DACA program

By Robert Barnes | Published November 12 at 12:42 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted November 12, 2019 |

The Trump administration told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that it has decided that the program that shields from deportation young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children should end regardless of its legality, and that there would be no point in asking it again to come up with additional justifications.

“We own this,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the court during a more than 80-minute oral argument over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which President Barack Obama authorized through executive action in 2012 to protect law-abiding immigrants brought to the United States as children.

His arguments seemed to resonate with the court’s dominant conservatives.

Nearly 700,000 people are enrolled in the program, which provides a renewable grant of protection from deportation and carries with it work authorization. But Francisco said the Department of Homeland Security disagrees with providing such a large classification of people with immunity from laws that usually would demand their removal.

Lower courts have said that President Trump’s decision in 2017 to terminate the program was based on a faulty belief that the program was legally and constitutionally defective and that the administration has failed to provide reasons for ending it that courts and the public can judge.

Francisco disputed that. While the first memo outlining termination of the program relied exclusively on the view that the program was illegal, he said, a subsequent agenda memo invited by a judge during the litigation supplied other reasons. There would be no point in requiring the administration to repeat that step, he said.

Trump has said it is necessary for the Supreme Court to agree with the administration’s view to get congressional Democrats back to the negotiating table to come up with a more permanent solution.

In general, the court’s liberals seemed highly skeptical of the administration’s actions, while the conservatives seemed open to the idea that it had the power to terminate the program. The court’s decision is likely to take months.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor mentioned Trump directly and highlighted the president’s conflicting statements about DACA recipients.

At one point, she said, Trump told the “dreamers” that “they were safe under him,” she told Francisco. Then, abruptly, the administration said it would be ending the program in a short time, giving them “six months to destroy your lives.”

Other liberal justices also wondered whether the government has more of a responsibility to say why it was ending a program that, according to dozens of briefs in the case, universities, cities, employers and the recipients themselves have come to rely on.

But Francisco said even Obama described the program as a temporary, “stopgap” measure. Recipients must reapply every two years, he said, or the benefits expire on their own.

Washington lawyer Theodore B. Olson, arguing on behalf of a coalition of businesses, civil rights groups, universities and individuals, said DACA was different from most programs because the government “invited them into the program.” Olson, a former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, said the recipients have identified themselves and made their deportation easier.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said deportation was unlikely — the government wouldn’t have the resources to undertake such a mass action. The real issue, he said, was work authorization.

The Trump administration moved to scuttle the DACA program in 2017 after Texas and other states threatened to sue to force its end. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions advised the Department of Homeland Security that the program was probably unlawful and that it could not be defended.

Sessions based that decision on a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which said that another Obama program protecting immigrants was beyond the president’s constitutional powers. The Supreme Court deadlocked 4 to 4 in 2016 when considering the issue.

Olson said that advice from Sessions gave the department no other option but to end the program. The court should require the administration to start over and give reasoned arguments for why it is in the country’s best interests to end the program.

But Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who said the “sympathetic facts” about DACA recipients “speak to all of us,” wondered what would be the point. “What more would you have the government say?” he asked Olson.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh also said a subsequent memo from then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen seemed to list reasons other than Sessions’s view that the program was illegal.

But Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said a presumption about the program’s illegality provides the backdrop for all of the administration’s actions.

Lower courts have rejected Sessions’s view. They have kept the program in place, restricting new applicants but allowing those already enrolled to renew their participation. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D), who is among those fighting the administration’s decision, said that about 400,000 two-year renewals have been approved since January 2018.

The program is open to those who were brought to the United States before they were 16, have lived here at least five years, paid for and received a background check and have a clean legal record. The program does not provide a path to citizenship, but it does allow recipients to work legally and to renew their two-year protection from deportation.

A government study found more than 90 percent of recipients, who now are in the 20s and 30s, are employed, and about half are students.

The Trump administration, which usually argues for broad executive power, in this case is arguing that the program is flawed and could not be defended against challenges from states that want to end it.

The Supreme Court’s somewhat reluctant review of the DACA program — it waited for months before accepting the case — meant that, for the third consecutive year, the high court will pass judgment on a Trump priority that has been stifled by federal judges, this time in a presidential election year and in a case with passionate advocates and huge consequences.

The Supreme Court ended its term in June by putting on hold the Trump administration’s plan to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. In 2018, it narrowly approved the president’s travel ban on arrivals from a handful of mostly Muslim countries.

The consolidated cases the court heard Tuesday are Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, Trump v. NAACP and McAleenan v. Vidal.

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