Supreme Court Rules Trump Illegally Ended DACA - RI Immigration Attorney Molina Flynn LIVE

Supreme Court Rules Trump Illegally Ended DACA - RI Immigration Attorney Molina Flynn LIVE

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 5-4 that the Trump administration violated federal law when it ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) that began under President Obama, upholds protections from deportation for roughly 649,000 unauthorized immigrants in the U.S.

Leading immigration attorney Joseph Molina Flynn, who heads the Rhode Island Latino PAC, joined LIVE to discuss the decision -- and implications, in a week in which the Supreme Court also ruled that it is illegal to fire employees for being gay or transgender. 

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"On the gay rights decision, [Justice] Gorsuch was also with the majority and he’s a Trump-appointed Justice," said Molina Flynn. "I think we often talk about how political the court is — the liberal and conservative factions — and what [Justice] Roberts has shown is legal reasoning is legal reasoning and it doesn’t play to heavy-handed politics. Trump’s already tweeted his displeasure. He’s called the court activist."

"Elections do have consequences — in making these appointments, [Trump] thought he was stacking the court in his favor," said Molina Flynn. "I want to be careful not to sing too much of Roberts praises — he did lay out the framework of how you could rescind DACA, [in that] you have to have reasons and they need to be spelled out. 

"So today we celebrate the win and are careful as we proceed," said Molina Flynn. "Roberts did lay it out."

More on Decision -- and Response

As Axios reports:

Why it matters: It's an unexpected victory for immigration activists. In the opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts, who sided with the liberal justices, wrote that the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) decision to rescind DACA in the fall of 2017 was "arbitrary and capricious."

Between the lines: The Trump administration has legal authority to end DACA, but the court found that the way it rescinded the program in 2017 violated federal law.

"The dispute before the Court is not whether DHS may rescind DACA. All parties agree that it may. The dispute is instead primarily about the procedure the agency followed in doing so," Justice Roberts wrote in the opinion.

Justice Roberts also wrote that DHS did not properly consider "what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients" if the program were to be terminated.

Trump Responds

Trump responded with a series of Tweets on Thursday. 

The recent Supreme Court decisions, not only on DACA, Sanctuary Cities, Census, and others, tell you only one thing, we need NEW JUSTICES of the Supreme Court. If the Radical Left Democrats assume power, your Second Amendment, Right to Life, Secure Borders, and...Religious Liberty, among many other things, are OVER and GONE!