Federal courts reject Trump immigration policies

The Trump administration’s family separation policy — state sponsored kidnapping and child abuse — may result in making orphans of 572 children for whom the government has opted not to try to reunify with their parents, despite a court order, and instead passing the buck to the ACLU: “If you want them reunified so bad, you do it.”

The judge was not amused. Judge calls Trump administration family reunification efforts ‘unacceptable’:

The federal judge overseeing the court-ordered reunification of the 2,551 migrant children separated from their parents at the border blasted the Trump administration Friday for lacking a plan to reunify the remaining 572 children in its custody with their parents and the slow pace of progress.

In a Thursday night status report filing, the Trump administration said only 13 of the parents had been located by the American Civil Liberties Union, which U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California called “unacceptable at this point.”

The parents of 410 children are currently outside of the United States, likely having been deported before reunification, according to the court filing.

The Trump administration had proposed the ACLU take the lead in locating and identifying what the judge had called “missing parents” of children still in government custody. Sabraw said that plan was not acceptable and placed that responsibility squarely on the government.

“Many of these parents were removed from the country without their child,” Sabraw said. “All of this is the result of the government’s separation and then inability and failure to track and reunite. And the reality is that for every parent who is not located there will be a permanently orphaned child. And that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration.”

The judge said he would soon issue an order to compel the government to provide information on still separated families to the ACLU no later than Aug. 10.

Sabraw said the government must identify a person or team to oversee the remaining reunification process, potentially from the State Department or the Department of Health and Human Services, and produce a plan as to how reunification would be accomplished.

Sabraw also said he would order the ACLU to organize a steering committee to provide a plan as to how it would use the information provided by the government to locate the remaining parents.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said the judge was extremely clear in stating that parents with minor criminal charges could be excluded only from the pool that was required to be reunited by his deadline and should not be permanently ineligible for reunification.

Also on Friday, another federal court Judge Upholds Order for Trump Administration to Restore DACA:

A federal judge on Friday upheld his previous order to revive an Obama-era program that shields some 700,000 young immigrants from deportation, saying that the Trump administration had failed to justify eliminating it.

Judge John D. Bates of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia gave the government 20 days to appeal his decision. But his ruling could conflict with another decision on the program that a federal judge in Texas is expected to issue as early as next week.

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The decision to end the DACA program has faced numerous legal challenges. Currently, the government must continue accepting applications to renew DACA status, if not new applications from those who meet the criteria to qualify. DACA recipients — often called “Dreamers” — typically were brought to the United States illegally as children through no choice of their own.

Judge Bates ruled in late April that the administration must restore the DACA program and accept new applications. He had stayed his decision for 90 days to give the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the program, the opportunity to lay out its reasons for ending it.

Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, responded last month, arguing that DACA would likely be found unconstitutional in the Texas case and therefore must end. She relied heavily on the memorandum that her predecessor, Elaine C. Duke, had issued to rescind the program and said that the department had the discretion to end the program, just as the department under Mr. Obama had exercised discretion to create it.

Judge Bates, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, did not agree. He called the shutdown of the program “arbitrary and capricious” and said that Secretary Nielsen’s response “fails to elaborate meaningfully on the agency’s primary rationale for its decision.”

Two federal judges, in Brooklyn and in San Francisco, issued injunctions this year ordering the government to keep the program. But neither of those rulings required that the government accept new applications, as the ruling by Judge Bates does. The earlier decisions are pending before appeals courts.

Meanwhile, the State of Texas and several other plaintiffs have sued the government to rescind the program, contending that it is illegal.

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In a statement on Friday, United We Dream, an organization that represents Dreamers, offered a sobering assessment: “The situation for DACA beneficiaries remains dangerous and unstable, as we do not know how the administration will respond, and there are other court cases in progress.”

Also this week, a federal court judge held Trump’s order threatening to withhold funding from ‘sanctuary cities’ is unconstitutional:

A federal appeals court in California ruled Wednesday that President Trump acted beyond his authority when issuing an executive order attempting to penalize “sanctuary cities” for refusing to cooperate with the administration’s immigration crackdown.

The decision, issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, barred the Trump administration from defunding San Francisco and Santa Clara County, the case’s two plaintiffs, but it did not uphold a nationwide injunction issued late last year by U.S. District Court Judge William H. Orrick of the Northern District of California. Instead, by a vote of 2 to 1, the three-judge panel sent the case back to the district court for additional fact-finding on the order’s nationwide impact.

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Wednesday’s ruling follows Orrick’s November decision that the president’s requirement to hold, detain and turn over noncitizens to the federal government reached beyond his authority. Federal law only requires the sharing of information by state and local governments with federal officials, not more.

The decision is seen as step forward for immigration advocates in their ongoing battle with the Trump administration. “Yet again, the rule of law trumps the president’s efforts to advance his war against hard-working families who can’t normalize their status in America,” California state Sen. Kevin de León (D) told The Washington Post.

“Dear Leader’s” unconstitutional autocratic dictates are the result of an impotent GOP Congress that refuses to act to modernize U.S. immigration laws. The GOP needs their bogeyman — immigrants — to wage their racist campaign of fear and loathing to turn out their xenophobic and nativist base of scared white people. Without their bogeyman, they have nothing to offer them.