This is rather nuts, and, also, the DHS needs better lawyers
A federal judge said on Friday that the Trump administration must reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in its entirety — because the Department of Homeland Security failed to “give a rational explanation for its decision” to end it.
US District Judge John D. Bates — who has been hearing the challenge brought by the NAACP and others to the administration’s decision to end DACA — put his decision on hold for 20 days “to permit the government to determine whether it intends to appeal the Court’s decision and, if so, to seek a stay pending appeal.”
Bates initially ruled against the administration in April, but put his ruling on hold to give the government a chance to provide a rational for its decision.
In Friday’s ruling, Bates found that “the Court sees no reason to change its earlier determination that DACA’s rescission was arbitrary and capricious.”
So, arguing that federal law is federal law which DHS is attempting to follow, and that the program itself wasn’t actually authorized by statutory law, and that Obama pretty much manufactured a pseudo amnesty out of thin air, doing something Obama himself said was un-Constitutional and against the law, was apparently the wrong tact to take with this judge
In his conclusion, Bates appeared to make an effort to preempt criticism from Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Trump’s supporters.
“The Court did not hold in its prior opinion, and it does not hold today, that DHS lacks the statutory or constitutional authority to rescind the DACA program. Rather, the Court simply holds that if DHS wishes to rescind the program—or to take any other action, for that matter—it must give a rational explanation for its decision,” he wrote. “A conclusory assertion that a prior policy is illegal, accompanied by a hodgepodge of illogical or post hoc policy assertions, simply will not do.”
So, the judge knows the program is illegal and DHS has the power to deep-6 it, and that it never should have been initiated, but, he did not like the way they decided to kill the illegal program.
.@MZHemingway on DACA ruling: "President Obama didn't have the authority to this, but somehow that was okay. But when President Trump tries to correct that issue, by rescinding it, then he can't do it." #SpecialReport https://t.co/k7DTFsIldN pic.twitter.com/yQmkuGgFGk
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 3, 2018
Meanwhile, the hearings for the states that are suing to end DACA start next week. It’ll be interesting to see if we then have competing rulings.
Actually…no. It’s scary that a federal judge doesn’t understand the law. He needs to be removed at once.
The Trump Administration should simply ignore the order. No federal judge should have the authority to issue an order that exceeds the bounds of his district.
Unlike federal judges.