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A DACA recipient who was brought to the U.S. when she was 4-years-old, speaks during a rally in support of a permanent legislative solution for immigrants in Los Angeles, California, February 3, 2018.
Monica Almeida | Reuters
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday in a set of blockbuster cases over whether President Donald Trump may terminate an Obama-era immigration program that shields hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation and allows them to receive work permits.
At the end of 80 minutes of extended argument the justices looked likely to allow the president to end the program, with Trump appointees Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh leaning in favor of the administration alongside the court’s three other conservatives.
Chief Justice John Roberts, though, who has at times split with his fellow conservatives in cases involving the Trump administration’s executive actions, could be unpredictable. It is not always possible to tell how justices will vote based on their questions at oral argument.
The court’s conservatives suggested that ending the program, which was implemented in 2012 by then-Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, fell within the administration’s discretion.
The court’s liberals, particularly Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer, suggested that the Trump administration did not adequately consider the effects of rescinding the program when it did so in 2017. To date, that action has been halted by lower courts in New York, California and Washington, D.C..
Sotomayor suggested that comments from Trump himself that were sympathetic to those under the program may have hurt the administration’s arguments, by “telling DACA eligible people that they were safe under him that that he would find a way to keep them her,” she said.
The cases are Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of , No. 18-587; Donald Trump v. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, No. 18-588, and Kevin McAleenan v. Martin Jonathan Batalla Vidal, No. 18-589.
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