The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday morning that the Trump administration cannot carry out its plan to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, writing in a 5-4 decision that Trump’s decision to end the program was “arbitrary and capricious.”
DACA has allowed nearly 800,000 young people to avoid deportation and remain in the U.S. Trump rescinded the program in 2017, but a series of federal injunctions halted the program’s closure.
“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action. Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what, if anything, to do about the hardship to DACA recipients. That dual failure raises doubts about whether the agency appreciated the scope of its discretion or exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner. The appropriate recourse is therefore to remand to DHS so that it may consider the problem anew.”
