Justice Department asks Supreme Court to hear DACA case

On the eve of the mid-term elections, the Justice Department asked the US Supreme Court to bypass three federal appeals courts and allow President Trump to end the DACA program of the era. Obama, who protects hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrant youth from deportation.

In court papers filed late Monday, Solicitor General Noel Francisco said that the government was asking the country's highest court to hear the case to determine whether it was lawful that the Trump administration puts an end to DACA. He described as "bad" the injunctions of three federal circuit courts preventing the government from killing the initiative and said they justified an "immediate review" by the high court.

"This is an extraordinary step, it is a late decision on the eve of the elections," CBS News Greisa Martínez, a DACA recipient and deputy executive director of the United We Dream Immigrant Advocacy Group, told CBS News. "(Mr. Trump) is trying to use the Supreme Court to advance his political goals of eliminating this country of young people of color."

DACA, abbreviation of Deferred action for children's arrivals, was instituted by President Obama by decree in 2012. This program allows undocumented immigrant youth, dubbed DREAMers, to obtain work permits and driving licenses if they meet certain conditions, including being arrived in the United States before the age of 16 and get a US license. high school diploma, GED or honorably serve in the military.

After several conservative states threatened to sue the Trump administration if it kept DACA alive, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a gradual reduction of the program in the fall of 2017. But circuits II, Ninth and D.C. prevented the government from completely dismantling DACA.

USCIS currently allows more than 700,000 DACA recipients to renew their coverage – valid for two years – but it does not accept new applications.

Echoing the words of the president and his attorney general, Francisco said the government had correctly decided to end the program "on the basis of serious doubts as to its legality and the practical implications of maintaining it".

The third senior justice official said that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had heard arguments on one of the DACA cases in May, had not yet ruled. Francisco added that the Court should consolidate all the affairs surrounding the program and address the issue that mandate.

In the summer of 2016, DAPA – a similar program of the Obama era that allegedly protected about five million undocumented immigrants from any eviction – was blocked by a stalemate 4-4 of the Supreme Court. The seat left vacant by the death of Judge Antonin Scalia was not occupied at that time.

If the court decides to accept the request of the administration and to re-examine the DACA case during this period, two judges appointed by President Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, will sit at the court .

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