There are many reasons why I voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and there's a very long list of reasons why I have voted for Democrats my entire life -- from the original blowjob impeachment to the Iraq War and the Great Recession -- but this was near the top of my list in the 2020 election.
As I and others have pointed out, there's a lot the Biden administration can do without congressional approval because the Trump regime did it without congressional approval.
Sources close to Biden say he will roll back the bulk of Trump's worst anti-immigration policies almost immediately after taking office.
After Mr. Biden is sworn-in in January, his administration will move to fully restore an Obama-era program that shields 640,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation, halting Mr. Trump's unsuccessful efforts to end it, people familiar with the plans told CBS News. The incoming administration also intends to rescind Mr. Trump's travel and immigration restrictions on 13 mostly African or predominantly Muslim countries.
Mr. Biden will look to implement a 100-day freeze on deportations while his administration issues guidance narrowing who can be arrested by immigration agents. Obama-era memos that prioritized the deportation of immigrants with criminal convictions, recent border-crossers and those who entered the country illegally more than once were scrapped in 2017 by Mr. Trump so that no unauthorized immigrant would be exempted from being arrested and removed from the country. [...]
"All that stuff was done administratively through the [president's] executive authority, and so a new executive can basically reject those and start from scratch," a source familiar with the Biden team's plans told CBS News.
Republicans won't be able to stop the Biden administration from rolling back Trump's policies.
We should entirely expect to see Republicans including state attorneys general challenge the Biden White House in court, but they've already set precedents that will enable Biden. Legal advocates and civil rights organizations challenged Trump's policies in court, but they were only successful on a handful of occasions. Courts largely deferred to the executive branch on matters of immigration because federal law gives the executive branch a wide degree of autonomy.
In short, court rulings in favor of Trump's authority will benefit Biden as he rolls back Trump's policies.
That's good news for now, of course, but it's bad news for the future of immigration policy. Americans are only ever another four years away from electing another Mad King who could abuse their executive authority for political reasons.
Personally, Trump's immigration policies were near the top of my list in this election cycle because they've been nakedly racist and unspeakable cruel. Images of children in cages immediately come to mind, but so do images of older people; grandparents and small business owners deported to other countries even though America is the only home they've ever known. We plucked them them out of their homes and lives just because of their skin color. I wouldn't want to be treated that way and as a transgender American I am keenly aware that none of us are free until everyone is free.
The Trump regime was populated by some true believers, of course, but there were just as many including Trump himself who centered these and other inhumane policies for personal political advantage or money. White supremacy is a grift just as much as it is an ideology.