Will Justice Roberts Assert Independence or Simply Act as Arm of the Trump Administration’s Assault on Immigration and Human Rights?
The following is a statement from Pili Tobar, Deputy Director of America’s Voice in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling which allows the Trump administration’s asylum crackdown to proceed.
Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling was the latest disturbing indication that the Roberts Court has become a fully partisan institution and a defender and enabler of Trump’s virulent strain of xenophobia.
The decision puts the Court on the wrong side of American public opinion, facilitating Trump’s draconian and un-American asylum restrictions and needlessly endangering the lives of countless thousands of families in the process who are anxiously waiting in Mexico for their day in court.
The President has been clear that his goal is to make sure the stories of asylum seekers never reach U.S. courts to be evaluated, tested and adjudicated, and now the highest court in the land is advancing that goal. Keeping people from accessing the U.S. justice system is a dangerous place for the judicial branch of the world’s oldest democracy to stand.
With Trump and Stephen Miller hellbent on circumventing the Constitution, Congress and America’s obligations under U.S. and international law – and ahead of the upcoming Supreme Court hearings on DACA in November – the essential question is whether the Roberts Court will continue down the path of becoming a fully subservient arm of Trump and Trump-ism, or retain whatever remaining shreds of independent integrity they have. So far it seems to be the former.
