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DACA Tag

At 4 p.m. Eastern, Trump will deliver what the White House is calling a major speech on the border crisis and the partial government shutdown. Various news organizations are reporting that in the speech Trump will offer an extension of DACA in exchange for border wall funding.

The lower federal courts repeatedly have attempted to strip the executive (meaning THIS executive, because he's Trump) of his constitutional and legislatively-granted powers. We saw it in the Travel Order cases, which resulted ultimately in a Supreme Court rebuke of this judicial overreach.

Monday morning, Trump unleashed a round of tweets blaming Mexico and the Democrat party for contributing to America's Dreamer crisis, picking up a thread he began Sunday on the same subject. DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), the controversial policy created extralegally by President Obama, was rightly kicked to the legislature to legally codify protections for individuals who were brought to the U.S. as children without any legal immigration status.

We previously reported that the Trump administration took the unusual step of trying to get the Supreme Court to hear the case of the San Francisco federal district court order preventing Trump from ending DACA without getting a ruling first from the 9th Circuit. What made the procedure confounding, is that the administration did not seek a stay from the 9th Circuit and then the Supreme Court, only expedited direct Supreme Court review on the merits. That direct review procedure is rarely granted.  At the same time, the administration filed an appeal in the 9th Circuit.

The Common Sense Coalition, made up of eight Democrats, eight Republicans, and one Independent, has struck a bipartisan deal on immigration even though they know President Donald Trump will likely veto it if it reaches his desk. (I feel like this is the tenth bill that has come up on this subject) It includes a few portions from Trump's bill, but lacks other "pillars" the president has emphasized like eliminating the diversity visa lottery.

Earlier today I was reading Prof. Josh Blackman's post responding to criticism he has received for using the term Judicial Resistance, On the Judicial Resistance:
Over the past year, I have discussed at some length the self-professed “legal resistance,” which has coordinated legal strategies to resist President Trump in the courts. This front is part of the broader #Resistance movement against President Trump in the political sphere. These actions are completely rational, and unsurprising from the party that (unexpectedly) lost the election....

Immigration has come to the forefront again as the government faces another possible shutdown this week. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has already stated she will vote no against a funding bill if it does not include language for DACA members, also known as Dreamers. Another option, though, is temporary protection after President Donald Trump's March 5 deadline passes.

A hot topic in the Legal Insurrection comment sections has been whether the insane/deranged/lunatic/vicious/malicious reaction of Democrats and the open-borders left to Trump's generous DACA/Dreamer amnesty framework was part of some three-dimensional chess play by Trump. In that scenario, Trump offered what he knew never would be accepted in order to make himself look good and his opposition unreasonable: Amnesty for 1.8 million 'Dreamers' plus immediate family reunification, in exchange for funding of border security and The Wall, and an end to extended family chain migration.

I admit to being a bit puzzled by the leftist outrage over President Trump's proposed DACA deal.  I fail to see anything "racist" about providing a pathway to citizenship for over a million illegal aliens (or in any of the other proposed provisions). House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), however, seems to imagine that it's some kind of  white supremacist plot.

The framework of a proposal unveiled by the White House provides for a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million so-called Dreamers, 25 billion for border security and The Wall, and an end of extended-family chain migration (though immediate family chain migration still permitted). You can read the full details here.