Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-587_5ifl.pdf
Page Number: 53.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

15 

Opinion of THOMAS, J. 

individuals Congress has deemed deportable or removable.” 
Texas  v.  United  States,  86  F. Supp. 3d  591,  654  (SD  Tex. 
2015).  The immigration statutes contain a level of granular 
specificity that is exceedingly rare in the modern adminis-
trative state.  It defies all logic and common sense to con-
clude  that  a  statutory  scheme  detailed  enough  to  provide 
conditional lawful presence to groups as narrowly defined
as  “alien  entrepreneurs,”  §1186b,  is  simultaneously  capa-
cious  enough  for  DHS  to  grant  lawful  presence  to  almost 
two million illegal aliens with the stroke of a Cabinet secre-
tary’s pen. 

B 
Then-Attorney General Sessions concluded that the ini-
tial  DACA  program  suffered  from  the  “same  legal  . . .  de-
fects”  as  DAPA  and  expanded  DACA,  finding  that,  like
those programs, DACA was implemented without statutory
authority.  App. 877–878.  Not only was this determination
correct, but it is also dispositive for purposes of our review. 
“It is axiomatic that an administrative agency’s power . . . 
is limited to the authority granted by Congress.”  Bowen v. 
Georgetown Univ. Hospital, 488 U. S. 204, 208 (1988).  DHS 
had no authority here to create DACA, and the unlawful-
ness of that program is a sufficient justification for its re-
scission. 

The  majority  opts  for  a  different  path,  all  but  ignoring
DACA’s substantive legal defect.  See ante, at 18–19.  On 
the majority’s understanding of APA review, DHS was re-
quired to provide additional policy justifications in order to 
rescind an action that it had no authority to take.  This rule 
“has  no  basis  in  our  jurisprudence,  and  support  for  [it]  is
conspicuously absent from the Court’s opinion.”  Massachu-
setts v. EPA, 549 U. S. 497, 536 (2007) (ROBERTS, C. J., dis-
senting).

The lack of support for the majority’s position is hardly