Last Monday, I was furiously pecking away on the keyboard at a law firm where I work as a paralegal, hoping to prepare all the evidence and finish a petition on time for an immigration case — that is, until a federal judge ruined everything.
The case involved a client who had been in the U.S. since the age of 14. He had lived here for over 20 years, attended middle and high school here, and suffered through all the same awkward teenage rites of passage as any other American.
If approved, the petition would have provided him with relief through Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which equates to a promise by the federal government not to deport an individual for a certain period of time.
But right as I was about to finish, the managing attorney turned towards me, and said, “Alright Hunter, you can stop now.” Confused, I asked why, to which he responded: “Some judge in Texas just killed the new program.”
By issuing a preliminary injunction just two days before the expanded DACA program was set to go into effect, Judge Andrew Hanen buried President Obama’s new immigration policy in the legal system on procedural grounds.
Judge Hanen effectively destroyed the hopes of millions of undocumented aliens and turned himself into a hero among conservatives.
“I think the law is on our side and history is on our side, and we are going to appeal it,” Obama told reporters at the White House last Tuesday in response to the ruling.
Meanwhile, the GOP leadership is running victory laps and touting this ruling as a vindication of its ridiculous assertions that Obama’s DACA program is an unconstitutional use of his executive authority.
But they are wrong.
Obama has the law, along with Reagan and George H. W. Bush, on his side.
It is my hope — and more importantly, the hope of millions of hardworking undocumented aliens — that Obama’s expanded DACA program will come to fruition.
Republican leaders can writhe around all they want, referring to the president as “Emperor Obama,” as Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) did in a 28-second video message he posted on Youtube in November, but the legality of Obama’s actions is firmly established in case law.
The Supreme Court stated in 2012 in Arizona v. United States that, “A principal feature of the removal system is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials. … Federal officials, as an initial matter, must decide whether it makes sense to pursue removal at all.”
President Obama, the highest federal official, gets first dibs on all deportation decisions.
Moreover, former President Ronald Reagan — you know, that radical pot-smoking, tree-hugging, latte-sipping, liberal — made the same types of immigration reforms that have Republicans up in arms now.
Not only did Reagan oversee a 1986 congressional law that gave legal status to up to 3 million immigrants who lacked authorization to be in the country, he took unilateral, executive actions to shield immigrant children from deportation once Congress failed to fix the defunct elements of the law, according to the Washington Post.
Three years later, former President George H.W. Bush granted similar relief. He shielded approximately 1.5 million family members “living with a legalizing immigrant who were in the U.S. before passage of the 1986 law,” according to the Washington Post this year.
Fortunately, the original DACA program is still in place. It protects individuals who came here illegally before the age of 16 from removal for a period of two years provided they meet certain criteria.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website states that, “The court’s temporary injunction, issued Feb. 16, does not affect the existing DACA.”
“Individuals may continue to come forward and request an initial grant of DACA or renewal of DACA under the guidelines established in 2012,” according to USCIS.
Though it’s fortunate that the original DACA program will remain in effect for now, Judge Hanen’s ruling will have disastrous and far-reaching consequences, placing millions of undocumented aliens in legal peril.
Millions of individuals were expecting immigration relief, only to have their prospects of gaining protection from deportation ripped away.
Deferred deportations do not grant pathways to citizenship; they merely allow individuals to stay in the country without facing removal proceedings. Clearly, this type of executive action is only a Band-Aid on the gaping wound that is America’s immigration status quo.
However, with such a narrow-minded and juvenile Congress, unilateral steps on immigration are increasingly looking more and more like the only item in the presidential toolbox. Obama would be wise to continue using it.
