The Trump administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday to take up the legal battle over the future of DACA quickly, asking the justices to consider the issue even before a federal appeals court has ruled on the program’s legality.
If the justices don’t act soon, the Justice Department said, it will probably be too late to get the case on this year’s docket. In that event, the government would likely be required to keep the program going at least another year.
DACA allows children of illegal immigrants to remain here if they were under 16 when their parents brought them to the U.S. and if they arrived by 2007. The Obama-era initiative has allowed 700,000 young people, known as DREAMERs, to avoid deportation.
The Trump administration moved to end the program a year ago, but federal courts have blocked that attempt. The administration also tried to get the case before the Supreme Court while it was pending in the 9th Circuit, but the justices declined that invitation in late February saying they assumed the appeals court would “proceed expeditiously to decide this case.”
But in a legal brief filed in the Supreme Court late Monday, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said, “That has not happened.” The Supreme Court rarely agrees to hear cases before the appeals courts have ruled, but the government’s chances might be better this time, given that the justices said they expected the appeals court to act more quickly than it usually does.
Civil rights advocates condemned the Justice Department’s action. “It is clear that Trump will stop at nothing to get what he and extremists have wanted all along — to deport as many people in our communities, including DREAMERs, as possible. And to do it as quickly as possible,” said Marielena Hincapié, of the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund, an immigrant rights group.
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