The Supreme Court Weighs the End of DACA

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2020

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This month, the Supreme Court is expected to decide a case with enormous repercussions: the Trump Administration’s cancellation of DACA, a policy that protects young immigrants commonly known as Dreamers. In November, Jonathan Blitzer spoke with two attorneys who argued the case, just before they went before the Court. Ted Olson, a noted litigator, is generally a champion of conservative issues, but he is fighting the Trump Administration here. Luis Cortes is a thirty-one-year-old from Seattle arguing his first Supreme Court case. He is himself an undocumented immigrant protected by DACA; if he loses, his own legal residency would be immediately threatened. Plus, the writer Bryan Washington, a native of Houston, remembers the social life of gay bars before the pandemic.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.5	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:14.1	This month, the Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision that will affect hundreds of thousands of Americans, undocumented immigrants protected
0:22.2	under DACA, the people known as Dreamers. Daka stands for deferred action for childhood arrivals.
0:30.0	President Obama issued the policy as an executive order after an immigration bill,
0:33.9	the DREAM Act, repeatedly failed to pass Congress. The Trump administration ordered DACA
0:39.3	canceled. A lawsuit was filed to prevent it from doing so, which reached the Supreme Court in pretty
0:45.1	short order. If the court rules in favor of the Trump administration, all the undocumented people who
0:51.9	have been living with relative freedom under DACA could be subject to deportation.
0:57.3	Most of these people grew up in this country, and some have no memories of any other.
1:02.4	In November, Jonathan Blitzer spoke to two of the lawyers making the case for the dreamers,
1:07.1	right as they were going before the Supreme Court.
1:09.6	I want to play that story again now to remind us of
1:12.6	what's at stake. Here's Jonathan Blitzer. I first met Luis Cortez in February of 2017 because I was
1:20.6	writing a story about a DACA recipient and I needed to get in touch with that person's lawyer.
1:25.4	Luis was his lawyer. In the course of the conversation, it starts to come out that Luis himself is a DACA recipient.
1:33.0	And so his own fate is bound up in the fates of all of the clients he's representing,
1:40.4	who also have DACA. Luis was born in Moralea Mijua,
1:46.0	Man in Mexico, and came to the U.S. with his parents
1:49.0	when he was barely a year old.
1:51.0	He had no sense growing up that he didn't have legal status.
1:56.0	The first time I think I really realized
	...

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