While still nothing is completely set in stone yet, it’s obvious that the federal courts are anticipating a Biden presidency – and for DACA to be completely resurrected as a free pass for those here illegally.

In light of that pending Biden administration, the courts yesterday ruled that Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf isn’t actually acting secretary at all, so he had no authority to issue his memorandum this last July that suspended the entire DACA program. Wolf made that decision following the tortured legal decision by the Supreme Court to not allow DACA to die, despite the fact that President Obama himself knew that DACA was outside his executive authority and claimed it would be “temporary” so Congress would pass a law.

Well, the Democrats have always banked on being the ones to write and pass that law. The fact that Donald Trump became president in 2016 halted those plans, and Trump has tried to undo DACA in the exact same way that Obama started it – first by executive order, and then fighting it in court. The fact that the Supreme Court came up with a truly awful 5-4 decision (how important does Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s vote sound right now?) to let DACA lag on in the courts has now come home to roost.

…However when it comes to DACA, a federal court may have saved Biden the trouble of fulfilling one campaign pledge in reinstating the program. Wolf's order was just ruled unlawful. https://t.co/krPd5umL9d

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) November 15, 2020

So, exactly WHO is in charge at Homeland Security if Chad Wolf is not? Like that matters to the activist judge who made the ruling. The only thing that matters is keeping Wolf from blocking any more DACA applications or renewals.

Judge Nicholas Garaufis said court conferences would be held to work out details of his ruling.”

He concluded, “Wolf was not lawfully serving as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security under the HSA [Homeland Security Act] when he issued the Wolf Memorandum” that suspended DACA.”

Karen Tumlin, a lawyer in the case and director of the Los Angeles-based Justice Action Center, said the ruling means, “the effort in the Wolf memo to gut the DACA program is overturned.”

She said the ruling applies to more than a million people, including more recent applicants and those seeking two-year renewals for protection under DACA.”

“This is really a hopeful day for a lot of young people across the country,” Tumlin said.”

Although President Donald Trump formally nominated Wolf for the job in summer, Wolf has yet to get a full vote in the Senate, keeping his role as “acting.” Garaufis cited the Government Accountability Office, which wrote in a report to Congress in August that Wolf was the beneficiary of an “invalid order of succession.”

The judge described an illegitimate shuffling of leadership chairs at the Department of Homeland Security, the agency responsible for immigration enforcement, for the predicament of Wolf’s leadership and that of his predecessor, Kevin McAleenan.”

“Based on the plain text of the operative order of succession,” Garaufis wrote in the Saturday ruling, “neither Mr. McAleenan nor, in turn, Mr. Wolf, possessed statutory authority to serve as Acting Secretary. Therefore the Wolf Memorandum was not an exercise of legal authority.”

What happens now? Probably nothing, at least not in the time left before the January 20th inauguration. As has been said many times before, DACA by executive order isn’t sustainable, and the SCOTUS ruling was Chief Justice John Roberts flaking out – again – on something that was patently obvious to even Barack Obama. Immigration reform has to come from Congress, not from the stroke of a president’s pen. President Trump has spent years trying to undo things like this, and if Joe Biden becomes president, expect that everything goes back to the way Obama had it.

Which means that the borders will be opened back up, and people will come streaming back in, and DACA will be brought back up to running at full speed. And if you ask questions about those crossing the border possibly bringing in COVID-19 with them, or trying to enroll children in schools that are still stuck in Zoom hell online and educating almost no one successfully, or flooding the job market with illegal workers in an economy that is once again being shut down in multiple states, then you’re going to be called a racist. If you weren’t used to being yelled at and name-called for pointing out the obvious truth, get a thicker skin right away.

Featured image via succo on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license