According to a new report from Axios, President Donald Trump may have found a new and inventive way to get something “very major” done on immigration – without going through Congress. The report says that the Trump administration has been in serious talks with lawyer John Yoo, who believes that a new Supreme Court ruling on DACA gives the president a path to make significant changes to immigration enforcement without worrying about petty little things like law and legislation. While such a move would undoubtedly be controversial, it could give Trump room to do some good before the election.
“Yoo detailed the theory in a National Review article, spotted atop Trump’s desk in the Oval Office, which argues that the Supreme Court’s 5-4 DACA ruling last month ‘makes it easy for presidents to violate the law,” reports Axios. “The president has brought up the article with key advisers, two Trump administration officials tell Axios. Yoo writes that the ruling, and actions by President Obama, pave the way for Trump to implement policies that Congress won’t.”
The report has credence, seeing as how Yoo himself has said that he has met with many key members of the Trump administration in recent weeks. President Trump has also signaled that he is ready to do something big on immigration, and he even hinted that the recent Supreme Court decision is what cleared the path for him to act.
Axios speculates on what the order could involve:
The order could include some protections for immigrants who traveled to the U.S. illegally as children, something most Americans support.
That could be a political olive branch to Latino voters, though the Trump administration moved to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which led to the Supreme Court’s involvement.
The order could also include significant new restrictions on immigration that couldn’t get through Congress but are favored by the president, Jared Kushner and hardline adviser Stephen Miller.
In his National Review piece, Yoo said that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave the president wide latitude when it comes to enforcing – or “under-enforcing” the law.
“Suppose President Donald Trump decided to create a nationwide right to carry guns openly,” Yoo wrote. “He could declare that he would not enforce federal firearms laws, and that a new ‘Trump permit’ would free any holder of state and local gun-control restrictions. Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency. And, moreover, even if courts declared the permit illegal, his successor would have to keep enforcing the program for another year or two.”
The idea of running some kind of scheme to get around existing law doesn’t really thrill us, especially if Trump is going to use it to extend DACA protections in some kind of strange way. On the other hand, if this is what it takes to send a message to the Supreme Court about how ludicrously illegal Obama’s immigration orders actually were, then maybe it’s for the best.
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