Judge slams Trump admin's DACA games as DHS scrambles to try to fix Chad Wolf's unlawful status

The federal judge who over the weekend ruled that the changes further decimating the popular Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are invalid because acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf is unlawfully in his job gave the Trump administration a deserved earful during ongoing proceedings in the case this week. It wasn’t the contempt charges deserved for ignoring court rulings regarding the program, but maybe we’re getting there.

CNN reports Judge Nicholas Garaufis read out loud a government statement that had named him an “activist judge” for ruling against the administration—“You're entitled to your own opinions, you're not entitled to your own facts,” he commented—and slammed intentional efforts to kill the program before the administration ends in January. “[W]hat we're doing is impacting the lives of many, many people, who are buoyed by the Supreme Court decision in June and have been undermined by the conduct of the Department of Homeland Security since then,” CNN reports he said.

That conduct from the Trump administration has included some ... legal maneuver (???) that I guess was supposed to correct the status of Unlawful Chad and his equally invalid policies. “On Saturday, DHS had Pete Gaynor, who is the Senate-confirmed FEMA administrator, temporarily exercise the authority of Homeland Security secretary to try to alleviate concerns over Wolf's legitimacy as acting chief of the department,” CNN reported earlier this week.

Talking Points Memo explains this “feat of quantum bureaucracy” in further detail here, and I’ll be honest, maybe I’m just tired from worry and anxiety about looks around at everything, but I read it and then reread it and I still didn’t quite get what they were trying to do. Perhaps you’ll get it because you’re all a smart bunch. Perhaps it doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t make sense.

What does make me feel better about not really understanding it is that Judge Garaufis could not have rolled his eyes harder at the bullshit: “Garaufis was not impressed,” the latest CNN report continued, “calling it a ‘sad and inappropriate use of executive authority to keep DACA recipients & DACA-eligible individuals (from accessing protections).’” That definitely sounds about right.

What happens next? Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic tweeted that plaintiffs in the litigation against the administration will next file a request for relief by next week, with the administration given until the week after that to respond. 

”The Trump administration has refused to implement a Supreme Court opinion from June that ordered them to restore DACA,” the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic continued. “It was made clear this morning that federal courts will not allow the government to continue delaying its obligation to follow the law.”

Of course, many who are angry that officials are outright defying orders from the Supreme Court on down are no doubt also frustrated that nothing seems to be happening, both when it comes to forcing the administration to reopen the program to thousands of new applicants and holding officials defying the courts accountable. Undocumented young immigrants deserve better. They’ve won this, over and over again. But yet again, they continue to be denied their justice.

Source: Daily Kos