LOS ANGELES — The “failures” of the nation’s leaders in Washington to make “comprehensive reforms to immigration policy “cut across party lines,” said Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles.
These failures date back to 1986, he said, which was the last time Congress passed immigration reform.
Ahead of the oral arguments on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals taking place Nov. 12 at the U.S. Supreme Court, Gomez said there are “no doubt” constitutional and legal questions “raised by DACA and how it was enacted.”
“But we need to be clear: The fate of these young adults should never have been in the courts in the first place,” the archbishop wrote in a Nov. 6 column in the Angelus, online news outlet of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. “And it would not be, if our leaders in Washington would simply set aside their political interests and come together to fix our nation’s broken immigration system.”
DACA was established by President Barack Obama’s executive order in 2012, and President Donald Trump ordered an end to the program in 2017. Several legal challenges to this order have resulted in a consolidation of three DACA cases now before the high court.
“Our nation made a promise to these ‘Dreamers,'” Gomez wrote. “We have a moral obligation. It is time for the president and Congress to honor that promise and live up to this obligation.”
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