DACASupreme Court declines to enter DACA fray

Published 26 February 2018

The Supreme Court announced today (Monday) that it will not, at least for now, enter the legal fight over the Trump administration’s cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The court’s decision to allow the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to resolve the legal challenges to the administration’s plan  means the administration cannot proceed with its plan to end the DACA program until the end of a few more months of appeals, that is, past the 5 March deadline the administration had set to for the 800,000 “Dreamers” who arrived in the country illegally as children.

The Supreme Court announced today (Monday) that it will not, at least for now, enter the legal fight over the Trump administration’s cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

The court’s order —“It is assumed that the Court of Appeals will proceed expeditiously to decide this case” — means the administration cannot proceed with its plan to end the DACA program until the end of a few more months of appeals, that is, past the 5 March deadline the administration had set to for the 800,000 “Dreamers” who arrived in the country illegally as children.

If the Supreme Court justices had taken the case, they could have made a ruling by the end of June. Now, however, the court decision not to intervene means that rulings by two federal districts courts will bloc the government from winding down the program until the different legal challenges are resolved.

The Independent reports that the government had appealed one of these rulings to the Supreme Court and, in a rare step, went around the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit — generally seen as sympathetic to the cause of immigrants— asking the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court order quickly. The Justice Department, however, did not ask the court to immediately halt the order.