On June 18 the U.S. Supreme Court blocked an attempt by the Trump administration to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which offers legal protection for hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
The ruling affirms the integrity of the process according to Notre Dame Law School Adjunct Professor Lisa Koop, associate director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center.
"In September 2017, this administration upended the lives of more than 700,000 community members by proclaiming an end to DACA in the most politicized and inhumane of terms,” Koop said. “When judicial eyebrows were raised by the substance of the bombast, this administration sought to spackle over their shoddy effort to terminate DACA with post hoc rationalizations. Today the Supreme Court affirmed that the integrity of the process matters and held this administration accountable.”
While the ruling leaves the door open for President Trump to rescind DACA in the future, the program remains in place for now.
“We celebrate for our communities and with our clients,” Koop said, “including DACA recipient nurses working on COVID floors at our hospitals, teachers instilling values of justice in our children and legal advocates leading us towards a better society. This fight is long from over and though we pause for a moment in joy and relief, we resume the fight to protect communities and pursue durable protections for our DACA recipient clients, friends, family members and coworkers."
Contact: Lisa Koop, 312-446-5365, lkoop@heartlandalliance.org