Announced in 2012, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is one of the signature policies of the Barack Obama administration. It provided temporary relief, including work authorization, for noncitizens brought to the United States as children. Implemented within months of the 2012 election, the policy followed several years of record-setting numbers of removals and the failure of Congress to pass immigration reform.
In ramping up immigration enforcement, the Trump administration has expanded the use of detention. As with many of his policy initiatives, President Donald Trump has added his own rhetorical and policy flourish to aggressive enforcement efforts.
Last week, I got behind in my blogging while I was in Santiago, Chile, recruiting international scholars and students, presenting talks on immigration, and meeting with alums and friends of UC Davis School of Law.
I am humbled, honored, and in, fact, awed by the opportunity to give a lecture named after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Some wonderful speakers, including my friend Angela Onwuachi-Willig, have delivered the lecture.
President Donald Trump, determined to demonstrate he is tough on immigration, is attempting to eliminate a path to legal immigration status that American leaders have respected for more than three decades.
Last month, Trump issued an order that would prohibit people who enter the country unlawfully from seeking asylum because they fear persecution. A federal judge rightly concluded that the order violated the law.
Earlier this week President Donald Trump called to abolish birthright citizenship, which few reputable scholars believe would be constitutional. This latest action on immigration demonstrates what is becoming more and more apparent: Trump does not feel bound to the rule of law. His immigration initiatives share two fundamental characteristics. First, he seeks to reduce immigration and specifically to reduce the number of immigrants of color coming to, and living in, the United States.
For years, the U.S. government has detained immigrants as a way of enforcing the U.S. immigration laws and to deter future flows of migrants to the United States. Over the last 20 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has regularly grappled with legal challenges to immigrant detention. Just last term, for example, the court in Jennings v.
