Supreme Court Must Allow Trump to End Obama’s DACA Program
President Donald Trump’s executive order ending DACA has been blocked by the lower courts, but this week it will go before the only one that matters: The U.S. Supreme Court. And while there is some uncertainty as to how the justices will rule in this case, there is only one ruling that satisfies the law – Trump’s order must stand and DACA must be thrown out as the illegitimate, illegal power grab that it always was.
Likely to serve as a deciding vote in the matter is Chief Justice John Roberts, as Fox News explains:
Legal experts have looked back on Roberts’ June vote that blocked a citizenship question from appearing on the 2020 census. The Trump administration claimed that Americans have the right to know who’s in the country illegally.
“So important for our Country that the very simple and basic “Are you a Citizen of the United States?” Question be allowed to be asked in the 2020 Census,” Trump tweeted at the time.
Critics said the question would discourage illegal immigrants from participating. Census totals determine congressional seats and political boundaries.
Linda Greenhouse, a New York Times columnist who focuses on the Supreme Court, wrote last week that the parallels between the census case and DACA is not exact, “but they are striking.”
She wrote that Roberts called the Commerce Department’s claim in the case “contrived.”
If Roberts takes a similar view of Trump’s decision to end DACA, it will effectively hand the Democratic Party one of the biggest wins of this administration. It will say, essentially, that the powers wielded by Barack Obama were not handed down to his successor. Such a ruling might be explained in a legally-defensible manner, but there is truth and then there is higher truth. And the higher truth here is that anything implemented via executive order can be undone by same. This is especially applicable to DACA since there are grave doubts as to how legal the order was in the first place.
We do not doubt that the Supreme Court’s liberal wing will vote against the administration in a blatantly activist judgment. But that is why it is extremely important for John Roberts and the rest of the court’s conservative majority to understand what it is we’re facing. It’s not about the “poor Dreamers” and their plight. It is about the rightful powers of the presidency, and there is no doubt that Trump had the rightful power to end this unlawful program.
Do not fail us, Supreme Court.