A federal District Court judge has once again declared President Obama‘s 2012 executive order seeking to legalize over one million undocumented youth in this country illegal. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/federal-judge-declares-daca-illegal-again-issue-likely-to-be-decided-by-supreme-court.
Democrats responded by saying, “So what? What are you gonna do about it?” And the answer appears to be … absolutely nothing.
That’s right. Even though a court years ago declared Obama had exceeded his legal authority, nothing has changed. https://libguides.law.asu.edu/DACA/history Obama knew darn well that, by issuing this executive order, he would be able to throw a bone to the illegal immigration lobby and the radical left just months before his very precarious reelection bid in 2012.
If it were struck down after the election, it wouldn’t matter since he would’ve cruised past the election in the meantime. And if things went according to plan, he figured that the courts would be so slow that the deportations would be put on hold long enough for a Democratic-controlled Congress to eventually bestow citizenship and voting rights to millions of illegal aliens. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/18/us/joe-biden-news
He wagered correctly. Despite the District Court making the obviously correct decision that Obama had no unilateral authority to grant such a large-scale amnesty with the awarding of work papers, the judges lacked the backbone to require the federal government to take corrective action. Instead, they put a stay on the implementation of their ruling until the illegal immigration advocates had a chance to appeal and go through the never-ending appellate process.
The biggest blow to border enforcement advocates came at the hands of Chief Justice John Roberts, who had the opportunity to clearly delineate that Obama’s actions were improper. Instead, he sided with the court’s liberals in claiming that President Trump’s executive order reversing Obama’s order was also illegal because it did not give sufficient reason why the Obama order was invalid. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/politics/john-roberts-supreme-court-daca-legacy/index.html
This was sheer madness, since courts have already declared that Obama exceeded his authority. It is axiomatic that if one president issues an executive order, the succeeding president has the authority to reverse that order.
But it is clear that Roberts was not basing his decision on the law or common sense, but rather what he believed was best for the image of the court. This is the same John Roberts who early on conceded that Obamacare was illegal, but engaged in contortionist logic to call it a legal tax because he didn’t have the guts to strike it down. https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/07/01/the-supreme-courts-john-roberts-changed-his-obamacare-vote-in-may/?sh=2364436d701d
He feared that it would make the court look bad, and that would disturb his standing in the D.C. cocktail circuit.
This is the same John Roberts who refused to take a stand on Pennsylvania’s secretary of state clearly unconstitutionally changing election law in 2020. Though the Constitution says that only a state legislature can change election law, the secretary of state unilaterally ordered that mail-in ballots could be accepted after Election Day. https://www.penncapital-star.com/government-politics/the-pa-supreme-court-ruled-on-critical-election-questions-thursday-heres-what-you-need-to-know/
Roberts could have joined the conservative majority in declaring this chicanery to be illegal. He knew it was illegal, but didn’t want to take that definitive stand, so he instead punted on the decision by claiming it was moot, since the election was already over. Once again, Roberts was placing his concerns about the image of the court over the actual law.
It’s been eleven years since President Barack Obama issued his executive order, seeking to legalize close to one million youth who came to this country illegally with their parents.
Despite judges holding that Obama’s actions were illegal, the DACA law remains in effect because judges have lacked the nerve to require the government to act on their rulings accordingly. Meanwhile, the matter winds its way through a decades-long appellate process.
Score it all as another victory in the Democrats’ unlawful quest to legalize illegal immigration.