Thursday, July 9, marks three weeks since the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration illegally ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, yet U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has still not reopened it to new applicants. Up to 66,000 undocumented teens could right now be eligible to apply, but they haven’t been able to because Trump officials have so far refused to provide any guidance in the weeks since the court’s decision.
“So, what’s up, Trump administration?” immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice asked in a statement. “Do you intend to comply with the ruling? Ignore it altogether? Pretend that it gives you license to retake hostages for some nativist deal you think you might be able to leverage?”
The three-week mark comes as legal experts and advocates have said the Supreme Court’s ruling meant DACA should have been fully back in place and reopened to young immigrants who haven’t been able to apply since the impeached president rescinded the program in 2017. “Anyone who qualifies as a dreamer under DACA should be allowed to be in the program,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said according to The Washington Post last month.
But three weeks have come and gone with no word about the status of new applications, with the administration instead threatening to again kill the program (a move that the impeached president would entirely own because the Supreme Court didn’t order him to end anything) as he tweets something about “law and order.” But as CNN analyst Julian Zelizer wrote last month: “Trump touts law and order when it suits him, but attacks the courts and erodes our judicial system when it comes to his agenda and actions.”
America’s Voice notes a decision by the Trump administration to again try to deport DACA recipients wouldn’t be just inhumane, but also universally unpopular.
”According to Global Strategy Group (in polling conducted on behalf of The Immigration Hub, America’s Voice, and FWD.us), in the twelve 2020 battleground states, Americans support citizenship for Dreamers by 72-19%,” the group said. “This includes strong majorities of Democrats (88-7%), Independents (69-13%) and Republicans (57-33%). The GSG poll echoes other DACA and Dreamer polls in recent years that find that Americans overwhelmingly support Dreamers.”
“The clock is ticking for the Trump administration to comply by the Supreme Court ruling on DACA,” America’s Voice founder and executive director Frank Sharry said. “A sane and politically wise White House would, at a minimum, accept the SCOTUS decision and the public’s verdict and reopen this popular program to all those eligible. But Trump is obsessed with wielding racism and xenophobia as political and cultural weapons, and Stephen Miller is obsessed with burning down the immigration system on his way out the door.”
Young immigrants
led the fight in the courts to save DACA and beat this white supremacist president in the highest court of the land. This is their victory—and that’s just one of the reasons why he’s fighting so hard against it.