Trump Says He Will Submit ‘Enhanced Papers’ After Supreme Court DACA Ruling

President Donald Trump walks off Marine One in Washington on May 30, 2020. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Friday said he will submit “enhanced papers” to cancel an Obama-era program that provides legal protections for undocumented immigrants who were brought into the United States as children after the country’s top court ruled to block the president’s first attempt to do so.

“The Supreme Court asked us to resubmit on DACA, nothing was lost or won. They ‘punted,’ much like in a football game (where hopefully they would stand for our great American Flag). We will be submitting enhanced papers shortly in order to properly fulfil the Supreme Court’s ruling [and] request of yesterday,” Trump wrote in a Twitter post.

“I have wanted to take care of DACA recipients better than the Do Nothing Democrats, but for two years they refused to negotiate - They have abandoned DACA. Based on the decision the Dems can’t make DACA citizens. They gained nothing!” he added.

Trump did not give details about what the “enhanced papers” would include.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration had acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” way when it decided to cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, commonly known as DACA, that protected hundreds of thousands of so-called “dreamers.”  The program temporarily shields these young unauthorized immigrants from deportation and provides them with benefits such as work authorization.

“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,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion (pdf). “The appropriate recourse is therefore to remand to DHS so that it may consider the problem anew.”

The Supreme Court ruling represents a setback for the Trump administration and for the president, who had made illegal immigration a priority in his 2016 election campaign.

The DACA program was created by a 2012 executive order signed by former President Barrack Obama. The program temporarily shields these young unauthorized immigrants from deportation and provides them with benefits such as work authorization and eligibility for a driver’s license and health insurance.

The order was made after failed negotiations on immigration reform at Capitol Hill.

The decision to end the program was met with fierce opposition. Multiple federal courts ruled against Trump’s move to end DACA, with some federal judges ruling that Trump could not terminate the program and ordering U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to continue accepting and adjudicating on DACA renewal applications.

The Trump administration has called DACA unlawful and an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the executive branch. Trump previously said that the winding down of DACA would be a gradual process, which would provide Congress a “window of opportunity” to act on the issue. The president previously appeared amenable to reaching a bipartisan deal on the issue.

Shortly after Thursday’s ruling was issued, Trump responded in a statement on Twitter by characterizing the top court’s recent decisions as “horrible” and “politically charged.”

“These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020,” the president wrote.

He also said that he will seek a “legal solution on DACA, not a political one” that is consistent with the rule of law.

“The DACA decision, while a highly political one, and seemingly not based on the law, gives the President of the United States far more power than EVER anticipated. Nevertheless, I will only act in the best interests of the United States of America!” he said.