PHOENIX (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday he will renew his effort to end legal protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the United States as children.
Trump denounced a Supreme Court ruling that the administration improperly ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2017. Splitting with Trump and judicial conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the four liberal justices in the 5-4 vote Thursday.
Through executive action, Trump could still take away the ability of 650,000 young immigrants to live and work legally in the U.S. And with no legislative answer in sight in Congress, uncertainty continues for many immigrants who know no other home except America.
In a tweet Friday, Trump said, “The Supreme Court asked us to resubmit on DACA, nothing was lost or won. They ‘punted,’ much like in a football game (where hopefully they would stand for our great American Flag). We will be submitting enhanced papers shortly.”
Many believe Trump could modify the rescinding of DACA in the same way he changed a travel ban on mostly Muslim countries. The ban was upheld by the Supreme Court after two revisions in over a year, including adding North Koreans and some Venezuelan officials to the ban.
In a 5-4 opinion with a stark rebuke from liberal justices, the high court found that Trump was well within a president’s considerable authority over immigration and the responsibility for keeping the nation safe.
Groups that support DACA said they will remain on guard against further action by Trump.
“What’s important to note: NOTHING has changed since yesterday and won’t change unless SCOTUS decides otherwise,” the immigration legal services provider and advocacy group RAICES, based in Texas, wrote on Twitter. “We’ll remain vigilant & ready to fight anything that may come.”
Hareth Andrade, a national staffer with Mi Familia Vota, an organization that focuses on voter engagement, said the president’s tweet is a “sore loser remark.” Andrade is also a DACA recipient.
“This appeal tactic will only run out the time he has left as president,” she said. “Our movement knows better, we have deeply organized our communities, and for now, have a SCOTUS decision on our side to keep our DACA benefits intact.”
Megan Essaheb, director of immigration advocacy for the Washington-based nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said that while Trump can still terminate DACA, he could also choose to support legislation that provides legal status to recipients along with 300,000 people who have temporary status and the estimated 11 million who are in the U.S. without permission.
“If he chooses cruelty, it will be on him,” Essaheb said.
The Trump administration says it’s moving forward against DACA, even though experts say there isn’t enough time to knock down the program before the November election.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president has vowed to take care of DACA far better than the Democrats ever did.
“We want to find a compassionate way to do this,” McEnany said.
“We’re going to move as quickly as we can to put options in front of the president,” Ken Cuccinelli, acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told “Fox & Friends.”
“That still leaves open the appropriate solution which the Supreme Court mentioned, and that is that Congress step up to the plate,” he said.
Activists are vowing to keep fighting for a long-term solution for young immigrants whose parents brought them to the United States when they were children. They not only face a White House that’s prioritized immigration restrictions but also a divided Congress that is not expected to pass legislation providing a path to citizenship anytime soon.
The high court decision on Thursday elicited surprise, joy and some apprehension from immigrants and advocates who know it’s only a temporary development.
“This is a huge victory for us,” Diana Rodriguez, a 22-year-old DACA recipient, said through tears.
Rodriguez, who works with the New York Immigration Coalition, said she hasn’t been back to Mexico since she was brought to the U.S. at age 2. The ruling means young immigrants can keep working, providing for their families and making “a difference in this country,” she said.
But the work isn’t over, Rodriguez said: “We can’t stop right now, we have to continue fighting.”
Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, appeared satisfied to let the court’s decision stand as the law of the land for now.
While some Republicans asserted that now is the time for Congress to clarify the immigration system, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear that Democrats were done with their legislation before the summer break and had little interest in meeting GOP demands to fund Trump’s long-promised border wall as part of any comprehensive immigration overhaul.
Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden said that if elected, he would send lawmakers proposed legislation on his first day in office to make DACA protections permanent.
For now, immigrants who are part of DACA will keep their protections, but there are tens of thousands of others who could have enrolled if Trump didn’t halt the program three years ago.
The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates that about 66,000 young immigrants meet the age requirement of 15 to join the program but haven’t been able to do so because the government has only been renewing two-year permits for those already enrolled.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services hasn’t signaled whether it will accept any new applications and it’s unlikely the Trump administration would do so without being forced by the courts. Still, pro-DACA organizations are encouraging those who qualify to file first-time applications.
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Riechmann reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Deepti Hajela in New York contributed to this report.
Trump embraces immigration court fight as election boost
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court’s rejection of one of Donald Trump’s key immigration measures reignites a hot-button issue in a presidential campaign already scorched by pandemic, economic collapse and protests over police brutality and racial injustice.
The president is betting that he can energize his most loyal supporters by fighting the Supreme Court, which decided on procedural grounds Thursday that he couldn’t end legal protections for young immigrants. Trump, who often attempts to shift the nation’s focus to immigration when forced to defend himself on other fronts, said Friday he would renew his legal effort.
His immigration push is risky, even for someone who has built his political career on defying conventional wisdom. It could allow Trump to fire up his base on an issue that was a centerpiece of his 2016 victory while highlighting Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s struggle to win over Latino voters. But it could also further alienate swing voters including suburban women who could decide the election.
Some Republicans say that, with less than five months before November, it’s not a fight worth having.
“It doesn’t make any political sense, or moral sense or ethical sense,” said Republican strategist Tim Miller, a frequent Trump critic and veteran of Jeb Bush’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential run. “Anybody that likes (Trump) because of his willingness to ‘go there’ on racial and immigration issues is already with him, and he’s not picking up anybody else.”
Still, Trump has built his presidency around hard-line immigration policies and a crackdown on the U.S.-Mexico border. He’s been eager to return to those themes after months of negative headlines about the coronavirus and an economy devastated by it.
The president plans to travel to Arizona next week to celebrate 200 miles of new border wall that has been completed during his term, and hold just his second rally after months of campaigning suspended amid more than 100,000 deaths from COVID-19.
His decision to resume big rallies despite virus concerns is another example of his determination to transform an issue into a political fight his supporters can embrace.
But COVID and the border wall are different from the 8-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, which protects 650,000 people brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and authorizes them to work.
Polls show widespread support for the program known as DACA, as well as for immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally through no fault of their own.
Some Trump allies acknowledge worries about losing support among moderates. But the president and some of his aides argue that will be easily offset by excitement among steadfast conservatives.
Biden, meanwhile, has promised to send legislation to Congress codifying DACA on his first day as president, if elected. But he has also refused to back decriminalizing illegal border crossing, unlike Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and other Democrats who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination.
Sanders routinely out-polled Biden among Latino voters during the primaries, helping power the senator’s big wins in Nevada and California, though Biden saw some improvement among Hispanics in places like Texas and Arizona.
Chuck Rocha was Sanders’ top aide on Latino outreach and has since launched a political action committee aimed at motivating Hispanic voters, especially in battleground states like Pennsylvania. He said he already has “people in the film room” and is planning to use the DACA decision — and the president’s vow to go back to court — “to draw a contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.”
“There’s a motivation factor we worry about with younger Latinos who supported Bernie Sanders who are not onboard with Joe Biden yet,” Rocha said. “But these people went to school with these DACA recipients. These kids are friends with these DACA recipients. These people understand that their friends are just as much American as they are, so it really cuts at the heart of an emotional issue.”
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that “Democrats really seem to be using the DACA recipients as pawns” for electoral purposes, adding, “That is despicable.”
Julia Rodriguez, a senior Biden campaign adviser, countered that Biden isn’t willing to lie quietly back while “Trump continues to double down on his base.” Instead, she said, Biden is “reaching out to women voters, to young voters, to voters of color.”
Trump and his campaign also have focused their response to the Supreme Court decision on their efforts to nominate more conservative justices to the Supreme Court. That’s despite the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, authored the DACA ruling.
Trump has used the federal courts as a powerful motivator before, stoking fears about possible Democratic picks. Conservatives had for years viewed gaining commanding representation on the federal bench as critical to slowing the nation’s cultural transformation, and Trump has largely delivered, appointing more judges than Barack Obama or any other recent president.
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh says, “Conservative judges were a huge issue in 2016 and will be again this November.”
Marisa Franco, the Arizona-based cofounder of Mijente, a Latino organizing and activist political organization, said she sees the DACA decision — and Trump’s response — as “an opportunity for Biden” but that promising to send legislation to Congress isn’t enough.
“I think he can go further and he must go further to actually solve these problems,” Franco said. She said that federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement “really parallel what we’re seeing in local police departments around the country. They are operating with blank checks with no accountability,” and Biden “needs to go in and he needs to clean house.”
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Associated Press Writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report from Atlanta.