Students react to Supreme Court arguments regarding potential repeal of DACA
5 min read
The debate for the repeal of DACA has impacted student life on campus since 2017, when its repeal was first proposed. (NPR.com)
by ABIGAIL BUCHHOLZ
News Editor
Around 700,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients around the country, with 9,700 in Virginia alone, are at risk of losing their DACA status. This is due to attempts by the Trump administration to shut down the program. These attempts culminated on November 12 with the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments for and against the rescinding of DACA.
DACA was enacted in 2012 by the Obama administration to protect children under the age of 16 who were brought into the country illegally. DACA allows these individuals to live and work in the US, on the condition that they keep their record clean.
Some UMW students feel that the DACA program is beneficial to the nation as a whole, and should not be repealed.
“DACA is here for young children who come here with their parents. It protects them from deportation and it helps them get a work permit. It’s valuable to this country in the fact that all these immigrants who grow up as young kids are a big part of our economy now. They are a big part of our electorate for the swing states now too,” said Alexis Rudisel, a junior political science major.
The Trump administration has been trying to rescind DACA since 2017, when the administration proposed a phase out system which would stop the consideration of new applications and limit the DACA renewal period. The administration’s reasoning for eliminating DACA was because it was illegal and unconstitutional, according to the Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The sanctuary campus movement began in reaction to this decision. At universities around the nation, alumni and faculty members encouraged their schools to refuse to work with federal immigration enforcement agencies and protect their DACA students.
While UMW never declared itself a sanctuary campus, in 2017 the administration said it was actively monitoring the situation. They also sent an email out to the campus community containing a message from President Paino.
In the email, Paino highlighted the value of diversity in the school system, and claimed that “Societies succeed best when all have access to education and talented people have opportunities to contribute.” Paino also emphasized that DACA members on campus were a valuable part of the school community. At the time, eight students at UMW had DACA status.
The first round of legal pushback to the Trump administration’s attempt to rescind DACA came on Nov 8, 2018, when the 9th Circuit U.S Court of Appeals ruled against the attempts. The court ruled that, while the executive branch had the power to end the program, a power granted when Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that the president has ‘broad discretion’ regarding immigration matters during Trump v. Hawaii, the executive branch still lacked a valid reason for repealing DACA.
For some students, the fact that the executive branch even has the power to make such large changes to immigration policy is frightening.
“It’s unnerving because that’s just giving too much unilateral power to the executive branch,” said Rudisel. “That’s the whole point of why they took away the line-item veto power of the president. We have a bicameral legislature for a reason, you can’t just give someone that much power. The fact that the court is just saying ‘yeah, under law you can do that, you just don’t have the right evidence,’ thats crazy.”
The case for DACA has now made its way to the Supreme Court where, on Nov 12, 2019 each side made their oral arguments voicing their support for, or against, the repeal of DACA.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco, an attorney arguing for the Trump administration, argued that “DACA was a temporary stopgap measure that, on its face, could be rescinded at any time. And the Department’s reasonable concerns about its legality and its general opposition to broad non-enforcement policies provided more than a reasonable basis for ending it.”
Theodore B. Olsen, one of the lawyers arguing against DACA’s repeal, argued that “An administration may impose new or different priorities, but only if it adheres to [legal] requirements and clearly states its policy choices so that it can be held publicly accountable for them. ”
Some UMW students believe that the argument that DACA is illegal and unconstitutional is incorrect, and support the continuation of the program.
“I think that’s a whole lot of crap. It’s obviously not unconstitutional and it’s not ‘illegal’. These kids came here with no choice, they came with their parents whether their parents were documented or undocumented. It doesn’t matter because these children didn’t have the ability to make that decision. So it’s unfair because that’s the only way they can get equal opportunity and to be protected. And to revoke that is unconstitutional honestly,” said Rudisel.
In response to questions posed by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Michael J. Mongan, the state solicitor general of California, argued that the administration needed to take ownership of their choices to end DACA. Mongan said, “It’s not a detailed discussion of the dramatic harm to hundreds of thousands of young people, to their families, to their employers, to the states, to the economy that would arise from this decision.”
UMW student Annie Perrin Grisham, a junior political science major, worries about the lives of those affected if DACA is repealed.
“I think that it’s silly that they are trying to do that when they could be focusing on other things. Most of the people that it [DACA] applies to were brought here before they knew what was happening. And it’s not their fault so why should we be trying to deport them,” said Perrin Grisham.
The future of DACA and the lives of all DACA recipients are now in the hands of nine Supreme Court Justices. At the moment the issue being debated isn’t the legality of the executive branch’s attempts to eliminate DACA, it is the basis behind their reasoning.
After hearing these oral arguments and debating further, the court will come to its decision in 2020. Due to the conservative makeup of the Supreme Court, some students in favor of the continuation of DACA fear for its continuation.
“I’m scared about a lot of things the Supreme Court is going to be ruling on here in the next few years,” said Perrin Grisham.
