New York Times columnist David Brooks says President Trump’s opposition has been getting dumber. He has a point.
San Francisco-based U.S. District Court judge William Alsup moved Tuesday to block the White House’s plans to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and simultaneously provided a new example of the kind of fairy tale anti-Trump resistance Brooks referenced in his most recent column. The main thrust of Alsup’s reasoning behind reinstating DACA as it appeared on Sept. 5, 2017 can be found here on pages 46 and 47.
However, as attorney and Washington Examiner contributor Gabriel Malor noted following the decision, the ruling on the Obama-era program, which protects an estimated 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were children, is all sorts of wrong.
First, he noted, the order relies on a bogus statistic that was debunked several years ago. Alsup’s injunction states that, “President George H.W. Bush extended the non-statutory program in 1990 to cover spouses of such legalized aliens, and the program ultimately provided immigration relief to approximately 1.5 million people.”
This is not true, as noted by Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who awarded the claim an unflattering three Pinocchios.
“The 1.5 million figure is too fishy to be cited by either the White House or the media. As best we can tell, this is a rounded-up estimate of the number of illegal immigrants who were married (1.3 million became 1.5 million),” he wrote on Nov. 14, 2014.
He added, “the numbers generated by that law — a little more than 140,000 — further indicate that the universe of potential applicants was much smaller than 1.5 million, especially given that the law eased restrictions even more.”
The problems with Alsup’s injunction, however, go beyond a single bogus figure.
“One administrative wrinkle in this order is that it reinstates DACA under the same terms and conditions as it existed prior to Sept. 5, 2017, but is silent on what to do with DACA recipients whose status has either lapsed or whose renewal applications were already rejected,” Malor noted. “The judge or DHS will need to clarify whether those prior DACA recipients must file a new DACA app or if they can file a renewal.”
“To sum up: judge cites tweet to conclude that DHS lacks authority to end a discretionary program that DOJ has determined is unlawful,” he concluded. “DACA recipients should be resting their hopes on Congress, not resistance judges.”
President Trump himself added to the criticism of the ruling Wednesday, tweeting that the court system has spiraled out of control with activist judges.
“It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts,” the president wrote.
Brooks wrote this weekend that anti-Trump opposition is increasingly relying on foolish long-shot strategies to depose the president.
“[T]he anti-Trump movement, of which I’m a proud member, seems to be getting dumber,” he wrote. “It seems to be settling into a smug, fairy tale version of reality that filters out discordant information. More anti-Trumpers seem to be telling themselves a ‘Madness of King George’ narrative: Trump is a semiliterate madman surrounded by sycophants who are morally, intellectually and psychologically inferior to people like us.”
Brooks added, “I’d like to think it’s possible to be fervently anti-Trump while also not reducing everything to a fairy tale.”
On Tuesday, Judge Alsup’s sloppily-argued and factually-challenged injunction suggests Brooks has a point.
