Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Trump’s DACA Challenge Beginning October
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – The Supreme Court will issue a ruling on the legality of Trump’s actions in trying to end the DACA program instituted under the Obama administration, slating a decision to be made during the Court’s next session between October and June of next year.
On Friday the highest court agreed to consider whether lower courts in California, New York, and Washington D.C. had been correct in assuming Trump could not undo the provision protecting illegal minors from deportation by executive action, seeing as it had been implemented by Obama in the same fashion.
As it exists, DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program the Obama administration called “a temporary stop-gap measure” for loose ends in the immigration system, provides illegal minors with a renewable two-year permit to work, but not a path to citizenship.
Detractors say it constitutes an indefinite suspension of citizenship laws—more of a “permanent” stop-gap measure effectively abrogating the law of the land—while proponents say it prevents children from being punished by deportation for their parents’ decision to cross the border illegally.
Trump had originally given congress 6 months to forge a bipartisan effort toward resolving the situation of the 700,000 children protected by DACA, but moved ahead with legal action when Congress failed to pass a bill, presumably in the mold of the 2001 Dream Act presented by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that included a path to citizenship but was also rejected by Congress.
With the Supreme Court’s next session ending in June of 2020, a decision could be rendered as the presidential election kicks into full gear, with DACA a hot button issue on the radar of both Trump and his Democratic opponents.