Date: 06-24-2016
Maria Diaz was glued to the television in her Southern Indiana home Thursday morning, waiting for a U.S. Supreme Court decision that she hoped would end more than a decade of living in fear as an undocumented immigrant.
• But in a home filled with framed family photos, she and her children watched those hopes dashed by a 4-4 ruling that blocked President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive action to shield more than 4 million undocumented parents and children — including 60,000 in Kentucky and Indiana —from deportation, while also allowing for work permits.
• “I am so sad … everybody’s in shock,” she said, offering reassurances to her U.S.-born son, who asked if the ruling threatened their ability to stay together. “No,” she told him, “we’re still living the same … unless something happens.”
The tie ruling sets no precedent but leaves lower-court rulings in place that in part found Obama lacked authority for his 2014 order called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, or DAPA, which would have given temporary protection to unauthorized immigrant parents with legal resident children. Also under challenge was a 2012 expansion of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which shields immigrants brought to the U.S. as children before age 16 who have lived here since 2010.
In Kentucky and Indiana alone, 43 percent of an estimated 138,000 undocumented immigrants — some of whom work in restaurants and factories, on farms and as landscapers — were potentially eligible for Obama’s actions.
Jason Bailey, director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, said the ruling holds back the state “by failing to protect thousands of families who are involved in and contributing to our local communities and economies.”
But it marked a victory for Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who joined 25 other Republican- led states to challenge Obama’s actions, meant to sidestep a Congress that had for years been unwilling to take up immigration reform.
“The President’s unilateral action was an end run around the democratic process and today the Court affirmed that the proper way to make changes to our immigration laws, or any other laws, is to go through the people’s representatives in Congress,” he said Thursday.
Louisville immigration attorney Rachel Mendoza-Newton said that shortly after the one-sentence ruling was issued Thursday, clients were asking, “What do we now?” For some, she said, the only answer was to “wait and hope.”
Among those waiting and hoping are Diaz and her family. More than 10 years after crossing illegally into the U.S. to find work, they live in a rented singlefamily home near Louisville with three children, two born in the U.S., all of whom are thriving in public schools. Diaz and her husband, Oscar Duarte, have jobs, attend church and pay taxes. But their unauthorized status has kept them from getting better jobs or buying a home and has created constant fear that a simple traffic stop could lead to deportation and separation from their children. Diaz, despite having a college degree from Mexico, cleans homes while her husband must find jobs that don’t require identification. Their children are among the roughly 2.8 percent of students in Indiana, and 1.8 percent in Kentucky, with unauthorized immigrant parents, according to the Pew Research Center.
“It’s a huge disappointment for millions of people,” said University of Louisville immigration law professor Enid Trucios-Haynes of Thursday’s decision.
Cornell law professor and immigration expert Stephen Yale-Loehr said the case now goes back to the federal district court for a trial on the merits. Any appeals could take years, or the government could drop the case. Meantime, he said, the ruling raises the political profile of an issue already looming larger in the presidential election, which also could determine who fills the Supreme Court vacancy.
While Hillary Clinton “has said that if she is elected president, she would do even more than President Obama tried to do to give undocumented children and parents a temporary reprieve from deportation,” he said, Donald Trump “will latch onto the Supreme Court’s tie as authority for his assertion that President Obama has already gone too far in pushing the executive action envelope instead of trying to work with Congress.”
In the long term, he said, congressional action is needed but those prospects remain dim in the near term. A new president could face additional legal challenges if he or she seeks to act through executive order.
While Obama called Thursday’s decision “heartbreaking” and said it “takes us further from the country we aspire to be,” he predicted Congress would not be able to ignore the need for an overhaul of the immigration system forever.
According to Bailey, “Congress must act on comprehensive immigration reform, which will help address the exploitation of many of our neighbors and improve the commonwealth as a whole.”
Diaz said she still hopes for a change in the country where she has raised a family. “Maybe after the election,” she said. “Maybe next year.”
By Chris Kenning
The Courier-Journal
