Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-587_5ifl.pdf
Page Number: 33

28 

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY v. 
REGENTS OF UNIV. OF CAL. 

Opinion of ROBERTS, C. J. 

share of recipients of any cross-cutting immigration relief 
program.  See B. Baker, DHS, Office of Immigration Statis-
tics,  Population  Estimates,  Illegal  Alien  Population
Residing in the United States: January 2015, Table 2 (Dec.
2018),  https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/
18_1214_PLCY_pops-est-report.pdf.    Were  this  fact  suffi-
cient to state a claim, virtually any generally applicable im-
migration  policy  could  be  challenged  on  equal  protection
grounds.

Second, there is nothing irregular about the history lead-
ing up to the September 2017 rescission.  The lower courts 
concluded that “DACA received reaffirmation by [DHS] as
recently as three months before the rescission,” 908 F. 3d,
at 519 (quoting 298 F. Supp. 3d, at 1315), referring to the
June 2017 DAPA rescission memo, which stated that DACA 
would “remain in effect,” App. 870.  But this reasoning con-
fuses abstention with reaffirmation.  The DAPA memo did 
not  address  the  merits  of  the  DACA  policy  or  its  legality. 
Thus,  when  the  Attorney  General  later  determined  that
DACA  shared  DAPA’s  legal  defects,  DHS’s  decision  to 
reevaluate DACA was not a “strange about-face.”  908 F. 3d, 
at  519.  It  was  a  natural  response  to  a  newly  identified 
problem.

Finally,  the  cited  statements  are  unilluminating.    The 
relevant  actors  were  most  directly  Acting  Secretary  Duke
and  the  Attorney  General.    As  the  Batalla  Vidal  court 
acknowledged,  respondents  did  not  “identif[y]  statements
by [either] that would give rise to an inference of discrimi-
natory motive.”  291 F. Supp. 3d, at 278.  Instead, respond-
ents  contend  that  President  Trump  made  critical  state-
ments  about  Latinos  that  evince  discriminatory  intent.
But,  even  as  interpreted  by  respondents,  these  state-
ments—remote in time and made in unrelated contexts— 
do  not  qualify  as  “contemporary  statements”  probative  of 
the decision at issue.  Arlington Heights, 429 U. S., at 268. 
Thus, like respondents’ other points, the statements fail to