On Tuesday, US District Judge in San Francisco William Alsup blocked US President Donald Trump's administration from phasing out DACA, the Obama-era immigration policy that allowed young undocumented individuals who had arrived in the US as children to be given work permits and a renewable two-year period of deferred action for deportation.
Another Trump tweet on September 6 reads: "Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can't, I will revisit this issue!"
In his recent ruling, Alsup wrote, "We seem to be in the unusual position wherein the ultimate authority over the agency, the Chief Executive, publicly favors the very program the agency has ended.
"For the reasons DACA was instituted and for the reasons tweeted by President Trump, this order finds that the public interest will be served by DACA's continuation," he added.
"I think Trump ran his campaign on the promise to eliminate the DACA program and he has taken on several different positions since he took office," Kim said to hosts
John Kiriakou and Brian Becker. "His administration obviously ended the program on September 5, 2017… Since September 5, DACA recipients have began to lose their status according to their individual expiration date. Since then, President Trump has taken on two very different opposing positions."
On Tuesday, during a meeting with Congress members, Trump said that he was open to reviving DACA provided he receives a funding deal to build his much-talked-about wall along the US-Mexican border.
"We'll do DACA," Trump said during the meeting. "Then we can start comprehensive immigration reform the next afternoon."
"Yesterday in the meeting, he [Trump] took on a position of a leader on bipartisanship to pass immigration reform that includes a solution for DACA recipients," Kim noted.
"Basically, he is going back and forth on this issue. It's very irrational and erratic. He's completely unpredictable."
While unpredictable on DACA, Trump has generally backed his strong anti-immigration language on the campaign trail with action since taking office. During Wednesday morning's immigration raid of 100 7-Eleven stores around the country, 21 people suspected of working illegally were arrested, making it the largest employment sweep in
Trump's presidency yet. Kim described it as "This is as inhumane as it gets."
"It is a direct attack on immigrants. This is something we have been fearing for a long time. This is something undocumented communities have experienced for a very long time. I've said it again and again that, unfortunately, a lot of the conversation in Washington politicizing the [immigration] issue has shadowed what undocumented communities experience every day," Kim said.
"The truth is that in the shadows, undocumented individuals and families are being broken apart, people are being raided in their homes and at work and people who are not a threat to the country are being arrested for no reason."