The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration may not immediately proceed with its plan to end a program protecting about 700,000 young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation, “dealing a surprising setback to one of President Trump’s central campaign promises,” the New York Times reported.

The ruling delivered “a hard-won victory to hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who have been living in limbo since President Donald Trump tried to dismantle the program, wrote Nicole Narea in a story for Vox.

The decision marked “the second stunning election-season rebuke from the court in a week after its ruling that it’s illegal to fire people because they’re gay or transgender,” wrote Mark Sherman for the Associated Press.

“The 5-4 outcome, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal justices were in the majority, seems certain to elevate the issue in Trump’s campaign, given the anti-immigrant rhetoric of his first presidential run in 2016 and immigration restrictions his administration has imposed since then,” Sherman reported.

Trump considers another attempt to cancel program

The Trump administration “signaled that it was considering another attempt to cancel an Obama-era program that provided legal protections and work permits to unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, a day after a loss at the Supreme Court injected the issue into an already contentious election cycle,” The Wall Street Journal reported on June 19.

One per cent of the world’s population has been forced to flee their homes due to war, conflict and persecution to seek safety either somewhere within their country or in another country, according to the latest Global Trends report released June 18 by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

At the end of 2019, there were 79.5 million people around the world who had been forcibly displaced, according to the yearly report, up from 70.8 million the year before. The rise was in part due to worrying new displacement in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sahel region of Africa, Yemen and Syria. It also reflected the inclusion for the first time of 3.6 million Venezuelans who have been displaced outside their country but who have not sought asylum.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place a lower court opinion upholding one of California’s sanctuary laws “that limits cooperation between law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, a measure that the Trump administration says is meant to “undermine” federal immigration enforcement,” CNN reported.

The California law “prohibits state officials from telling federal ones when undocumented immigrants are to be released from state custody and restricts transfers of immigrants in state custody to federal immigration authorities,” wrote Adam Liptak in the New York Times.

The Trump Administration sued California in 2018 in federal court, “accusing the state of unlawfully obstructing enforcement of federal immigration law and saying the measures violate the U.S. Constitution’s provision that federal laws take precedence over state laws,” noted Ted Hesson of Reuters.

“The case, which would have been heard next fall or winter, raised the broad issue of whether state and local governments can effectively provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants threatened with arrest or deportation,” wrote USA Today’s Richard Wolf.

June 20 marks World Refugee Day.

As the Trump Administration continues its draconian efforts to shut America’s doors to refugees, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is hosting virtual World Refugee Day events. Click here for more details (link).

The United Nations General Assembly launched World Refugee Day in 2000.

The Trump administration “continues to advance its policies to restrict legal immigration, halting the flow of foreign workers and raising the bar for asylum seekers hoping for sanctuary,” report Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Maggie Haberman in the New York Times.

They report that administration officials last week “proposed a fallback for when they need to lift “emergency” border closure rules for the coronavirus, proposing regulations that would raise the standard of proof for migrants hoping to obtain asylum and allow immigration judges to deny applications for protection without giving migrants an opportunity to testify in court.”

The proposal would make it harder for immigrants to claim asylum in the U.S., even after the COVID-19 pandemic, writes Julia Ainsley for NBC News.

“If enacted after a public comment period, the rule would allow immigration judges to throw out asylum cases before holding a hearing,” she reported.

Critics say the proposed changes “are so severe that they would effectively shut down the asylum system in this country,” NPR reported.

The draft regulations are available here.