Things You Hear on NPR: No Idea How Anyone Could Think DACA Was Unconstitutional

NPR on DACA:

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, as it’s officially known, has broad support across the political spectrum. The majority of Democrats and Republicans tell pollsters that they support protections for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children — called DREAMers.

But the fate of the DREAMers is far from certain. The Trump administration is trying to end DACA, which it considers illegal. The high court may well clear the way for that to happen. And those in Congress still can’t agree on a way to protect DREAMers.

“which it considers illegal”—now where would the Trump administration get a weird idea like that?  Nowhere does NPR mention the inconvenient fact that DACA was an executive order by President Obama—he didn’t like the fact that Congress never passed the “DREAM Act”; so he claimed the authority to change the law anyway, unilaterally.  NPR certainly doesn’t mention the fact that Obama himself had observed on multiple occasions that this would be unconstitutional, right up until he decided to do it.

These are extremely relevant facts to any discussion of whether the act was unconstitutional.  By omitting them, NPR’s staff are either exhibiting lazy journalistic incompetence, or deliberately spinning the narrative; take your pick.

As to the underlying policy debate, reasonable minds can differ.  As even NPR implicitly allows, it’s for Congress to decide.  If NPR thinks the policy is so popular, Congress is free to enact it into actual law any time.