Supreme Court rules against Trump’s bid to end program shielding ‘Dreamer’ immigrants

Roberts wrote that the court was obligated to consider Duke’s explanations, not Nielsen’s, given the “basic rule” that an agency “must defend its actions based on the reasons it gave when it acted.”

Given that, Roberts wrote that Duke failed to take into consideration the full effects of doing away with the program. Among those consequences, he cited estimates that eliminating DACA would lead to the loss of $215 billion in economic activity and $60 billion in federal tax revenue over the next ten years.

“The consequences of the rescission, respondents emphasize, would ‘radiate outward’ to DACA recipients’ families, including their 200,000 U.S.-citizen children, to the schools where DACA recipients study and teach, and to the employers who have invested time and money in training them,” Roberts wrote. 

Roberts wrote that those interests were not necessarily enough to ensure a loss for the administration. But, he said, the government was obligated to at least consider those factors, and it did not.

“Making that difficult decision was the agency’s job, but the agency failed to do it,” Roberts wrote. 

In a statement, Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said that “DACA recipients deserve closure and finality surrounding their status here in the U.S. Unfortunately, today’s Supreme Court decision fails to provide that certainty.”

“The DACA program was created out of thin air and implemented illegally. The American people deserve to have the Nation’s laws faithfully executed as written by their representatives in Congress—not based on the arbitrary decisions of a past Administration,” Wolf said. “This ruling usurps the clear authority of the Executive Branch to end unlawful programs.”

It was not immediately clear what impact the court’s decision will have on Trump’s suggestion that he would seek a deal with Democrats on the immigration program if the Supreme Court allowed him to terminate it, though it’s unlikely that meaningful action will be made on a new deal before November’s election.

“Rest assured that if the SC does what all say it must, based on the law, a bipartisan deal will be made to the benefit of all,” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter last year, referring to the Supreme Court. 

The ruling gives Democrats, who have long seen DACA as a stopgap measure, more leverage in any future discussions. 

The administration’s efforts to terminate DACA were previously halted by courts in New York, Washington, D.C., and California. 

The cases are Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, No. 18-587, Donald Trump v. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, No. 18-588 and Kevin McAleenan v. Martin Jonathan Batalla Vidal, No. 18-589.

— CNBC’s Dan Mangan and Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report. 

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/18/supreme-court-rules-against-trump-in-bid-to-end-obama-era-immigration-program-shielding-dreamers.html