Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images Somehow the Supreme Court has dealt its second blow of the week to the Trump administration, and the right-wing agenda of the GOP: On Thursday, the Court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to end DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by Barack Obama in 2012, which prevents hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the U.S. who arrived as children from being deported.
The ruling was a close 5-4, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts siding with liberals . Roberts wrote the majority opinion, and was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor. For DACA recipients, most of whom have lived in the United States for the majority of their lives, it means the threat of possible deportation from their homes and families posed by the Trump administration has been deferred. And that years of lobbying Congress and the public has paid off. On Twitter, many shared their relief under the hashtag #HeretoStay.
But even as they celebrated, activists cautioned that the decision doesn’t guarantee that DACA will be safe from the Trump administration in the long run; the ruling merely states that the administration failed to provide adequate justification for ending the program. “We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
For many Dreamers, DACA itself is merely a compromise. It does not provide a path to citizenship, but allows qualifying immigrants to apply for renewable two-year visas. Activists and advocates are pushing for much more permanent and sweeping solutions to our broken immigration system, asking Congress to pass legislation guaranteeing permanent protection for Dreamers. As one DACA recipient put it, “This is not a long-term solution. Trump could choose to rescind this program tomorrow.