Recently, a U.S. district judge had dismissed a lawsuit brought by ten Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents against U.S. President Barack Obama for them not being able to enforce the deportation of undocumented minors who qualify for the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. The program allows those high ability high school undocumented young people to be able to stay in the United States and continue to go on to college or who go into the U.S. military. This measure is temporary, and does not confer permanent residency or U.S. citizenship. Whatever flaws there may be with this program, it is a more humane measure than deporting hundreds of thousands of kids who did not come to the United States of their own will or doing.

      But the anti-immigration bigot Kris Kobach sees it differently. As the leading lawyer for the ten agents, he has appealed the decision of the U.S. District court judge, and will most probably fight this decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kobach, as we may all recall, is a leading advocate for zero interest in trying to find ways to make those who qualify legal. This includes young people who were brought to this country by their parents when they were children. Despite these young people having had no choice in being brought to America in the first place, Kobach believes they should all be deported all the same. He believes that ICE should have the power to enforce the laws regardless of the circumstances. That is why he is helping to make sure that the ten agents “do their duty.”

       Kris Kobach, the Secretary of State for Kansas, and a leading member and leader in the anti-immigrant group FAIR (Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform), was most likely one of the people who cost the Republican Party the last presidential election.

Because former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney supported Kobach’s views, 75 percent of all registered Latino voters went against Romney. It is an expensive lesson that I hope the Republican Party has learned. Despite all this, Kobach is still very much around, and causing all kinds of legal mischief. For him it is no problem to squash the dreams and aspirations of hundreds of thousands of kids who did not come to this country voluntarily and are caught in a legal limbo. Should America blindly enforce a law that could cost this country some of its potentially best and brightest generation? This is one very clear case of enforcing the letter of the law while defeating the spirit of the law. It is an extremely inhumane lawsuit to put it mildly, and was fortunately defeated. I hope it remains defeated.