What’s the point of being a law scholar if you do not want to follow the law? This is the story that’s making the rounds through lots of outlets
Law scholars urge Trump to keep program for young immigrants
A group of legal scholars is urging President Donald Trump to keep a program protecting hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation and is outlining a legal argument to maintain it.
Around 100 law professors and immigration attorneys are scheduled Monday to send Trump an open letter arguing the president has the legal authority to preserve the Obama administration program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
Michael Olivas, a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center and Santa Fe, New Mexico, resident, told The Associated Press the letter details why the program, which has helped around 750,000 immigrants, is legal.
“It’s a very successful program, and we layout the legality,” said Olivas, one of the authors of the letter. “It is not unconstitutional as some have suggested.”
Federal courts have ruled the president can use “prosecutorial discretion” to give certain immigrants, like these young migrants, temporary protective status, the scholars said.
Prosecutorial discretion doesn’t make it legal (even Obama agreed). These people are unlawfully present in the United States. Federal law makes it quite clear that anyone who is in the U.S. in this manner is unlawfully present, and executive action for a slight deferral doesn’t make their status legal. Only Congress can do that.
Could Trump announce that he would use prosecutorial discretion to give temporary protective status to certain companies that refuse to pay their taxes? How would that go over?
