Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-587_5ifl.pdf
Page Number: 66

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DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY v. 
REGENTS OF UNIV. OF CAL. 
Opinion of ALITO, J. 

now  plays  in  our  constitutional  system  should  consider
what has happened in these cases.  Early in the term of the
current  President,  his  administration  took  the  controver-
sial  step  of  attempting  to  rescind  the  Deferred  Action  for
Childhood  Arrivals  (DACA)  program.    Shortly  thereafter,
one of the nearly 700 federal district court judges blocked 
this rescission, and since then, this issue has been mired in 
litigation.  In  November  2018,  the  Solicitor  General  filed 
petitions for certiorari, and today, the Court still does not 
resolve the question of DACA’s rescission.  Instead, it tells 
the  Department  of  Homeland  Security  to  go  back  and  try 
again.  What this means is that the Federal Judiciary, with-
out holding that DACA cannot be rescinded, has prevented 
that  from  occurring  during  an  entire  Presidential  term.
Our constitutional system is not supposed to work that way.
I join JUSTICE THOMAS’s opinion.  DACA presents a deli-
cate political issue, but that is not our business.  As JUSTICE 
THOMAS explains, DACA was unlawful from the start, and 
that alone is sufficient to justify its termination.  But even 
if DACA were lawful, we would still have no basis for over-
turning  its  rescission.  First,  to  the  extent  DACA  repre-
sented a lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion, its re-
scission  represented  an  exercise  of  that  same  discretion, 
and it would therefore be unreviewable under the Adminis-
trative Procedure Act.  5 U. S. C. §701(a)(2); see Heckler v. 
Chaney, 470 U. S. 821, 831–832 (1985).  Second, to the ex-
tent we could review the rescission, it was not arbitrary and 
capricious for essentially the reasons explained by JUSTICE 
KAVANAUGH.  See  post,  at  4–6  (opinion  concurring  in  the
judgment in part and dissenting in part).