IN JUNE, NEARLY 700,000 DACA recipients could breathe a sigh of relief when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The court determined that the basis for President Trump’s action was “arbitrary and capricious.” The grounds presented for termination failed to consider the impact of the program’s rescission, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.
The grounds of the ruling are important because the court did not address whether DACA was legal. For now, DACA remains fragile. People who have benefited from the program, put in place by executive action under President Barack Obama in 2012, can continue to obtain valid work permits and are protected from deportation. An estimated 130,000 people would have been eligible to submit new applications for the program, except that the Trump administration released a memo on July 28 saying it would “reject all initial requests for DACA and associated applications for Employment Authorization Documents.”
This momentary reprieve and upsurge of hope resulted from decades of fierce social, political, and legal organizing by undocumented youth and their supporters, often at great personal risk. The Trump administration may decide to attack DACA again. It would likely be a costly undertaking since a substantial bipartisan majority of Americans support DACA.
While DACA prevents the eviction from the U.S. of a sector of immigrants, it does not dismantle the massive deportation machine that operates in this country nor create a pathway to citizenship—key components of comprehensive immigration reform. Authentic immigration reform begins with the recognition that U.S. immigration laws, from their inception, have been informed by discriminatory narratives. The first immigration law, the Naturalization Act of 1790, made it possible for those born elsewhere to become citizens—but only if they were “free white persons” (“white” meaning certain Europeans, and “persons” essentially meaning men), excluding enslaved people, Native Americans, those without property, most women, and all others not defined as white. Only property-owning white male citizens could vote.
Expansions and restrictions to citizenship and immigration in subsequent U.S. laws and policy have been informed by each moment’s historical context and the dominant narratives in the country. Most often, the U.S. has had exclusionary immigration laws based on race, largely motivated by the racist sentiments of the time. The Trump administration’s attempts to terminate DACA are no exception.
Christians understand that narratives give birth to laws. Scripture itself is evidence that laws are not formed in a vacuum but are interlaced with a narrative. As Bible scholar Sophia A. Magallanes-Tsang put it, history precedes ethics. We make laws out of an incarnate reality and for an incarnate reality. We cannot understand Hebrew law without understanding the Hebrew history that birthed it. We must consider the incarnate reality preceding laws when evaluating their meaning and validity.
What is the present U.S. incarnate reality? Our government separates children from their parents and cages them. Our laws punish immigrant families deemed to appear to need public benefits. Our laws ban humanitarian relief to Middle Easterners fleeing war. Our immigration laws still prioritize Europeans.
The Trump administration has fostered and weaponized anti-immigrant sentiments and devised policies to accompany racial hatred. But Trump is not alone. Obama was rightly termed “deporter-in-chief” and several presidential administrations before his failed to address the racist realities that have motivated much immigration policy.
Christians cannot stand on the side of policies that honor the image of God in some and annihilate it in others. Countering racist narratives from centers of power is crucial for the life of a democracy. Our votes make a difference by supporting anti-racist policies and those who would enact them.
In Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s opinion on the DACA decision in June, she pointed to the “impermissible discriminatory animus” in President Trump’s rhetoric that led to his action to rescind DACA. Sotomayor reveals the dangers of not considering the broader context in which laws are made. As long as racist narratives nurture a racist context, racist laws will be birthed.
Editors’ note: The online version of this article has been updated to include information related to the July 28 memo issued by the Trump administration.
Sandy Ovalle, a native of Mexico City, is a former senior director of campaigns and mobilizing at Sojourners.
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