President's Blatant Bigotry May Save DREAMERS in Federal Court
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
03 April 18
"You can't come into court to espouse a position that is heartless."
- Senior US District Judge Nichlas G. Garaufis
US District Court for Eastern District of New York
September 26, 2017
Lawyers in all sorts of courts argue heartless positions every day without
fear of reprimand from a judge, who may also be heartless. The admonition
from Judge Garaufis is an anomaly filled with hope, not least because he was
admonishing the Trump administration for its heartless immigration policy.
Specifically, the judge was chiding lawyers from the US Department of
Justice for the government's rigid unwillingness to adjust their schedule
ending the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), the program
designed to provide justice to some 800,000 immigrants who were brought to
the US as children and have grown up here to be as American as anyone else.
Judge Garaufis pointed out that the government's heartless action affected
more than just the 800,000 young people, but also their families, employers,
and communities.
As soon as the Trump administration announced its plan to end DACA, its
defenders took the government to federal court. The National Immigration Law
Center, attorneys general of sixteen states (including New York,
Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, California, and Vermont), and other
plaintiffs sued the US to prevent the government from ending DACA. The
National Immigration Law Center issued a statement September 5, condemning
the administration's attack on DACA:
This is a defining moment for our country. We are being called upon to
choose which side of history we are on: Are we going to stand with young
people who have grown up in our country and are striving to achieve their
dreams? Or are we going to allow policymakers to erect barriers that block
youth from contributing their best to this country, which is their home? .
[Trump's decision] is a morally bankrupt choice."
In the courts it was a different story after the preliminary procedural
activity. On January 9 (Nixon's birthday) US District Judge William Alsup of
San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction requiring the US to leave its
DACA program in place until the issue had been fully litigated. On February
12, Judge Garaufis in Brooklyn issued a second nationwide injunction
complementing the first. In response to the government's objections, the
judge wrote in his 55-page decision:
. the court finds that a nationwide injunction is warranted in these cases.
First, it is hard to conceive of how the court would craft a narrower
injunction that would adequately protect Plaintiffs' interests. Plaintiffs
include not only several individuals and a nonprofit organization, but also
sixteen states and the District of Columbia.. Furthermore, there is a strong
federal interest in the uniformity of federal immigration law.. Because the
decision to rescind the DACA program has a "systemwide impact," the court
will preliminarily impose a "systemwide remedy."
In that same opinion, preventing the Trump administration from carrying out
mass deportations under DACA, the judge observed that: "One might reasonably
infer that a candidate who makes overtly bigoted statements on the campaign
trail might be more likely to engage in similarly bigoted action in office."
Before the Brooklyn court issued its injunction, the US had appealed the
California injunction to the Supreme Court. When two federal district courts
disagree, the Supreme is more likely to intervene to settle the differences.
Here, two federal courts were in agreement. On February 26, the Supreme
Court declined to hear the DACA case, allowing it to proceed in district
court and, as needed, federal appellate court. The Supreme Court made no
ruling or comment on the merits of the DACA case. The Supreme Court's
decision leaves DACA in place as the legal process proceeds, perhaps until
it eventually reaches the Supreme Court on appeal at some unknown date in
the future.
On March 29, in Brooklyn federal court, Judge Garaufis ruled against a US
motion to dismiss the case. He rejected the US Justice Department argument
that, just because the president repeatedly makes racially and culturally
bigoted remarks - like calling Mexicans thugs, animals, and bad hombres -
that doesn't prove his actions against minorities are based on his bigotry.
Ruling that the suit against the government's immigration plans, Batalla
Vidal v. Baran et.al, can go forward, Judge Nicholas Garaufis wrote:
"Plaintiffs have alleged sufficient facts to raise a plausible inference
that the DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] rescission was
substantially motivated by unlawful discriminatory purpose." Or to put it in
lay terms, the immigrant Dreamers, people who were brought here as children
and have grown up as American as you or I, were and very likely still are
targets of the president's vitriolic hatred expressed at the start of his
campaign when he called all Mexican immigrants criminals, drug dealers,
rapists, and "some good people."
Rejecting the Justice Department's motion to dismiss the case, Judge
Garaufis wrote dryly: "Although the use of racial slurs, epithets, or other
racially charged language does not violate equal protection per se, it can
be evidence that official action was motivated by unlawful discriminatory
purposes." Again, in lay terms that means that when a known bigot does
something obviously bigoted, then perhaps his bigoted action is derived from
his expressed bigotry. Just maybe.
Judge Garaufis's ruling should allow the case to go to trial and be
determined by the evidence. As the judge wrote: "The court does not see why
it must or should bury its head in the sand when faced with overt
expressions of prejudice. The court is aware of no authority holding that
this rule does not apply simply because the speaker is, or is running to be,
the President of the United States."
Do we really want to be the kind of country needs its courts to enforce
common human decency? That's the kind of country America seems to be these
days, and it's taken a good deal of time to get here. At a time when the
Congress is filled with quisling Republicans and feckless Democrats, it
appears as a slightly hopeful sign when some courts put at least some check
on the president's cruel destructiveness. The people affected by DACA are
very different from our president, not least because they were not born into
a rich family of practicing racists. The president's decidedly un-Christian
burst of twitter spittle over Easter weekend offered no hope. "NO MORE DACA
DEAL," he spluttered all in caps before going on to claim a fever-dream
"caravan" of immigrants swarming across the border was somehow true (along
with others like "DACA is dead because the Democrats didn't care or act, and
now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon... No longer works. Must
build Wall and secure our borders with proper Border legislation. Democrats
want No Borders, hence drugs and crime!").
Bigotry is soul-destroying for everyone, as our bigot-in-chief in the White
House demonstrates almost daily. To be a decent nation within the norms of
common decency and the intent of the US Constitution, we must resist and
reject bigotry in all its forms. But for hope to be realized, a lot more of
us need to bring the callous politics of bipartisan cruelty to an end. There
may or may not be light at the end of the tunnel for any of us. There is a
hint of light at the end of the tunnel for DACA, but there may only be the
Supreme Court at the end of the tunnel, a court where many parties have
pleaded positions that are heartless and the court has affirmed their
heartlessness.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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