Washington(CNN) The Supreme Court ruled last week against President Donald Trump's attempt to terminate DACA, an Obama administration program that protects from deportation and gives work permits to some undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children.
Trump responded to the court's decision with two tweets that were full of false and misleading claims. Here's a breakdown.
Trump tweeted: "I have wanted to take care of DACA recipients better than the Do Nothing Democrats, but for two years they refused to negotiate - They have abandoned DACA."
Facts First: It is nonsensical to claim that Trump has been trying to support DACA recipients better than Democrats. Trump has repeatedly tried to end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) despite vocal Democratic objections. And Trump has rejected various Democratic proposals to save the program even though they have offered him concessions on his own priorities, like a wall on the US-Mexico border.
Democratic President Barack Obama created DACA in 2012, giving new rights to a group of undocumented immigrants who came to the US before they turned 16 and who met certain date-of-arrival and behavior criteria. Democrats have not only tried to convince Trump to preserve DACA but have passed -- with the support of some Republicans -- a House bill that would give the approximately 650,000 DACA recipients, plus other undocumented "Dreamers" not on DACA, a pathway to citizenship.
Democrats have also made multiple offers to Trump to protect DACA in a compromise deal -- offering him, among other things, billions in funding for his border wall. Trump has rejected every offer, arguing that a deal to keep DACA must include limits on legal immigration.
"Democrats have consistently tried to defend DACA recipients, whereas Trump has flip-flopped on numerous occasions," said Geraldo Cadava, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University who studies Latinos in the US. "Sometimes he says he supports them, while other times, when justifying his desire to rescind, he says they're 'far from angels,' and some are 'hardened criminals.'"
United We Dream, an immigration advocacy group, also says Trump's claim that he has been better than Democrats for DACA recipients is false.
"My belief is that if somebody is working to protect people they do not use them as bargaining chips...which is what he's really done since the beginning," said Sanaa Abrar, advocacy director for United We Dream. "No conversation about DACA recipients has come out of that White House without also -- in the same sentence in many cases -- a demand for an unnecessary wall or permanent changes to our immigration system as we know it."
Trump also tweeted: "Based on the decision the Dems can't make DACA citizens. They gained nothing!"
Facts First: The Supreme Court didn't say anything about whether DACA recipients can eventually be made citizens -- whether by Democrats, Republicans, or a bipartisan effort.
"There is nothing in the Court's opinion that prevents Congress from providing a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients. The case had nothing to do with citizenship and this issue was not addressed by the Court," Angela Banks, a law professor at Arizona State University, said in an email.
The DACA program has never included a direct pathway to citizenship for people enrolled. For DACA recipients (or any other group of undocumented immigrants) to get a pathway to citizenship, Congress would have to pass, and the president would have to sign, legislation -- for example, the American Dream and Promise Act, which the Democratic-controlled House passed last year but the Republican-controlled Senate has not voted on.
"There's nothing in the DACA decision that prevents a future Congress from legalizing the Dreamers' status and putting them on the path to citizenship. I have no idea what he's talking about, unless he means that a future Democratic president couldn't do it on his own initiative, which has always been true," Cristina Rodriguez, a law professor at Yale University, said in an email.
Trump also tweeted: "The Supreme Court asked us to resubmit on DACA, nothing was lost or won. They 'punted', much like in a football game..."
Facts First: These claims about the court's intentions are more subjective than the others, so we're not calling them flat false, but Trump was putting an overly rosy spin on what happened. The Supreme Court did not explicitly ask the administration to "resubmit" anything, though it did make clear that it was free to do so. And while the court said that the Department of Homeland Security has the power to end DACA, giving Trump ammunition for a potential future attempt, the Trump administration clearly lost this particular case: its attempt to terminate DACA quickly was rejected.
"The administration lost in its effort to end DACA. It can try again, but the first attempt to end the program failed," said Banks, the Arizona State professor.
Trump himself initially seemed to frame the decision as a defeat for his side. Shortly after the decision was issued last Thursday, Trump tweeted that recent Supreme Court decisions were "shotgun blasts" to conservatives' faces.
The DACA decision was not about the legality of the program itself. Rather, this case was about whether the Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that governs how agencies make regulations, in the way it handled its attempted termination of the program.
A 5-4 majority of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal justices, found that the administration did violate the act by making an "arbitrary and capricious" decision without a "reasoned explanation."
"The dispute before the court is not whether DHS may rescind DACA. All parties agree that it may. The dispute is instead primarily about the procedure the agency followed in doing so," Roberts wrote. He wrote that the court was sending the matter back to the Department of Homeland Security "so that it may consider the problem anew."
Roberts's words effectively gave a green light to the Trump administration to try to produce better reasoning to end the program. But there was no direct request from the court to do so -- and the administration's new reasons would almost certainly be challenged by DACA supporters, generating another months-long or years-long legal battle.
Rodriguez said the court is not asking the administration to resubmit. Rather, "the Court is instead saying that the administration can resubmit if it wants to, by trying again to rescind DACA according to the procedural parameters the Court has laid out. Whether to try again is up to the administration."