“Until now, every administration over the past 60 years has adopted similar humanitarian policies. In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower protected tens of thousands of Hungarian refugees from deportation after they fled Soviet Union rule; Presidents Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon protected more than 600,000 Cuban immigrants escaping an oppressive regime; and President Bill Clinton established a deferred action program for those petitioning for relief under the Violence Against Women Act of 1994… To date, five federal courts have found the administration’s decision to end the [DACA] program arbitrary and capricious.”
Janet Napolitano and John A. Perez, USA Today

“One principle of administrative law, codified in the Administrative Procedure Act, is that ‘legislative rules’ are to be announced in advance, giving the public a chance to comment before a final rule issues… DHS had not used notice and comment to announceDACA. But rescinding a program may be different from announcing one, because of what lawyers call ‘reliance interests’... The day before DACA was announced, no one had a right to expect it, and no one had made use of it. But after DACA went into operation, nearly 900,000 people took advantage of it. Relying on the government’s description of the program, they risked eventual deportation by revealing their personal information to DHS; in exchange, they received ‘work authorization,’ which meant they could apply for driver’s licenses, attend school, and hold jobs like other residents. Rescinding the program without warning would jerk the rug out from under them.”
Garrett Epps, The Atlantic

“The administration’s core argument is that the decision to end DACA is not reviewable in court in the first place, that it is the type of decision that is ‘committed to agency discretion’ and so not open to challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act. As the plaintiffs’ briefs point out, that is a strange argument, because if the administration is right that DACA was illegal from the start, then ending it is a matter of legal compulsion rather than discretion; in any event, legality is quintessentially a question for judges…

“The court’s eventual decision in the case… is obviously of vital importance to the young people who in the seven years since DACA began have been able to study, work legally and start families. But the decision will also be important in defining the court’s relationship to a president who behaves as if he has the Supreme Court in his pocket. It will indicate whether the Roberts court — more specifically, the chief justice himself — will continue to insist on believable explanations from an administration that often appears incapable of giving one.”
Linda Greenhouse, New York Times

“No matter how the U.S. Supreme Court rules… the fact that the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program came down to an up or down vote of six men and three women is itself a lesson in how Washington works — which is to say, not well. Only the most anti-immigrant extremist believes the 700,000 or so individuals eligible for the DACA program — straight-arrow young people with no criminal record, a high school degree and, in some cases, a record of U.S. military service — should be expelled from this country, the only home many of them have ever known.”
Editorial Board, Baltimore Sun

“In the expansive realm of congressional dysfunction, there are few recent examples that surpass the failure to shield from deportation hundreds of thousands of unauthorized migrants, now in their 20s and 30s, who have grown up, studied and entered the job force after being brought to the United States as children… It was August 2001 when then-Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican, and Sen. Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, introduced the Dream Act, outlining a pathway to legal permanent residency for migrants who entered the United States as minors, usually with their parents. Since then, repeated iterations of that measure have become enmeshed in the broader partisan impasse over immigration, even as lawmakers, including many Republicans, voiced ritual sympathy for dreamers…

“An attempt to break the logjam last year, with a compromise pairing a long-term fix for the dreamers with funding for border security, including President Trump’s wall, fizzled in the Senate when he threatened a veto. Now that the president is building portions of the wall anyway, by diverting funds appropriated by Congress for the military, what possible justification can lawmakers find to avoid doing the moral and humane thing by guaranteeing a normal life for dreamers?”
Editorial Board, Washington Post