President Donald Trump called on the Supreme Court to strike down DACA, paving the way for Congress to pass legislation that would “actually benefit” the hundreds of thousands of young immigrants in the program.
“President Obama said that he did not have the right to sign DACA, that it will never hold up in court. He signed it anyway! If the Supreme Court upholds DACA, it gives the President extraordinary powers, far greater than ever thought,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday.
“If they do what is right and do not let … DACA stand, with all of its negative legal implications, the Republicans and Democrats will have a DEAL to let them stay in our Country, in very short order. It would actually benefit DACA, and be done the right way!” he continued.
DACA, an acronym for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is an immigration policy launched by then-President Barack Obama in 2012 and allows hundreds of thousands of young illegal aliens to remain in the country without fear of deportation. While the executive order does not provide a pathway to citizenship, it allows these young undocumented immigrants to work in the U.S. legally and obtain driver’s licenses.
Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-NV) (2nd R), the first Dreamer elected to Congress, helps leads immigrants and supporters as they march on the Las Vegas Strip during a “We Rise for the Dream” rally to oppose U.S. President Donald Trump’s order to end DACA on September 10, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The immigrants protected under DACA are typically referred to as “Dreamers.”
Obama previously said he didn’t have the authority to sign such an order without input from Congress, but later chose to bypass lawmakers and implement DACA anyways.
While Trump supports the goals of DACA, he believes that Obama “never had the legal right” to establish the program on his own. Instead, the president wants the GOP and Democrats in Congress to reach a consensus and pass it into law.
Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in 2017 that he was rescinding the order, deeming it unconstitutional. However, the Trump administration has since had trouble nixing the program.
A federal appeals court in November 2018 upheld a nationwide injunction, keeping DACA in place. Now the fight has reached all the way to the Supreme Court. (RELATED: Trump’s Immigration Agenda Hit With String Of Losses By Obama Judges)
The country’s top court will hear arguments about Trump’s attempt to rescind the program on Nov. 12. The legal question being posed to the Supreme Court justices is not whether the policy itself is lawful, but whether the president properly adhered to the Administrative Procedure Act when he tried to strike it down.
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