Commander-in-Chief Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have blasted a San Francisco judge whose immigration ruling might protect Dreamers from sudden deportation.
In a Tuesday night verdict, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup ordered the federal government to resume its processing of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program renewals. Under DACA, illegal immigrants who arrived to the United States as children can receive temporary, renewable permits allowing them to work and residence on American soil for several years at a time.
“We believe that decision was wrongly decided,” Pence said in an interview with Fox News. “Once again, another West Coast judge has rendered a decision that, if it would go to the Supreme Court, we’re sure it would be overturned.”
Alsup’s determination only extends protection for adults who’d already applied and been successfully admitted to DACA. His ruling would not, among other things, force the government to accept new applications from otherwise qualified young adults.
A day after the ruling, Trump also took to Twitter to lambast Alsup and a perceived liberal bias in the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts,” bemoaned the president over social media.
It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018
Trump’s feud with the 9th Circuit Court and the judiciary runs deeper than DACA.
West Coast judges were among the first to order injunctions against his executive travel bans, which sough to curb immigration to the United States from a handful of impoverished, Muslim-majority countries.
But more than anything else, Trump’s damning of Alsup exposes a unique variety of hypocrisy and flip-flopping that’s become characteristic of the current administration.
As a Republican candidate, Donald Trump promised to eradicate DACA and other pro-immigration policies upon assuming office. After inauguration, the president spoke to Dreamers, program advocates, and supportive politicians, changing his mind on the need to deport young adults who’d grown up in the United States.
While spring turned into summer and summer to autumn, chaos again crept into the Oval Office. Facing an impending lawsuit from the Republican attorneys general of over a dozen states, Trump formally rescinded DACA in September, mere months after assuring dreamers that they could “sleep easy.”
Negotiations between the White House and pro-DACA Democrats faltered in October, after the president reneged on a deal with liberal leaders.
Nowadays, Trump’s position is that Dreamers can’t be saved from deportation unless Democrats sign off on a spending bill – one that would requisition nearly $40 billion to go toward the construction of an improved barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border.
On Wednesday, Vice President Pence reaffirmed his superior’s objective, saying there can’t be a DACA deal without a wall.
“As the president said last weekend at Camp David, there’s no DACA fix without a wall,” said Pence. “We’re going to build a wall and we’re going to end chain migration or we’re going to end the Visa Lottery Program and we’re going to deal with DACA. But we’re going to do it in a way that will meet the expectation of the American people.”
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