Politics

Trump’s DACA Deadline Is Today, Here’s Why It Doesn’t Matter

REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Saagar Enjeti White House Correspondent
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President Donald Trump’s March 5 deadline to Congress to come up with a permanent solution for DACA recipients will come and go without consequence after a recent Supreme Court decision.

Trump announced the end of the Obama-era protections for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children in September telling Congress it had 6 months to codify the program into law. The president demanded that Congress appropriate funding for a southern border wall, end chain migration, and end the diversity visa lottery program in exchange for signing any such bill.

The interim period saw several bouts of high stakes bipartisan negotiations between lawmakers, including a short government shutdown, to little avail. Trump’s deadline then hit a major snag in the federal court system beginning in January 2018 with a California federal judge’s injunction disallowing the government to end DACA, saying the president’s reason for ending DACA was not legally justifiable.

This January 2018 injunction requires the Department of Homeland Security to continue renewing DACA status and work permits for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. The Department of Justice tried to avert the federal ruling by asking the Supreme Court to immediately review its appeal the normal avenue of the 9th circuit court.

The Supreme court then declined the justice department’s request February 26 effectively ensuring the injunction will remain in place as litigation winds its way through the federal court system over the next year.

The White House meanwhile has made little mention of DACA since a bill it supported failed to garner enough votes in the Senate in mid-February. “While radical Schumer Democrats align themselves with the open border fringe, the Trump Administration will continue advocating for the American people. The next step will be for the House to continue advancing the proposal from Chairman Goodlatte and Chairman McCaul,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement at the time.

Goodlatte’s bill, however, has seen little movement in the Congress with few White House meetings on immigration since the vote.

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