President Donald Trump and his advisers are considering a loophole outlined in a National Review article that would enable him to bypass Congress to impose policies restricting immigration, the news website Axios reported on Sunday.
The June 22 article, titled “How the Supreme Court’s DACA Decision Harms the Constitution, the Presidency, Congress, and the Country,” has been spotted on Trump’s desk, and the president has brought it up in discussions with advisers, two Trump administration officials told Axios.
The article was written by John Yoo, the lawyer best known for writing President George W. Bush’s legal justification for torturing detainees after 9/11.
In the article, Yoo argued that the recent ruling against Trump’s attempt to remove people shielded from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program “makes it easy for presidents to violate the law, but reversing such violations difficult — especially for their successors.”
Yoo added that President Barack Obama’s orders to impose DACA and the Supreme Court ruling upholding them paved the way for presidents to impose policies without congressional approval, even if they violate laws.
Yoo said those policies could remain beyond the end of Trump’s first term and take several years to overturn.
In a July 10 interview with Telemundo, Trump said he would soon sign a “big immigration bill,” which he also called a “big executive order,” citing the recent Supreme Court decision.
“We’re working out the legal complexities right now, but I’m going to be signing a very major immigration bill as an executive order, which Supreme Court now, because of the DACA decision, has given me the power to do that,” Trump said.
*story by Business Insider