_____

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández as interviewed in Jacobin:

“Going back to the Reagan administration proceeding to the Clinton years, the Bush years, and the Obama years, we have exorbitantly linked the criminal justice system with the immigration system. So we’ve stacked an immigration law enforcement apparatus on top of a racially biased criminal law enforcement apparatus, and not surprisingly that has led to a racially biased immigration law enforcement apparatus.”

Professor Hernández of the University of Denver studies the intersection of criminal law and immigration law at his blog Crimmigation. In this interview — released just before the news of the immigration negotiations was made public — he takes a long look back at the legal constructs framing the current debate, specifically the “binary of immigration law that’s existed for several years that states that there are ‘good’ immigrants and ‘bad’ immigrants.” Professor Hernandez argues that “making policy assessments about the moral worth of individuals is a really slippery because we’re talking about people. People are not easy to characterize; we’re a mix of good and bad.”

Read more »

_____

The editorial board of The Los Angeles Times:

“Trump should set aside his insistence on his silly wall — which even many of his fellow Republicans dismiss as unnecessary and excessively costly — and put the well-being of the Dreamers ahead of his ill-advised campaign promises.”

The Editorial Board makes their point pretty plainly: “We hope the president and leaders of both parties in Congress can find a way to make this work.” They cite fairness and allude to public polling that indicates that “most of the American people” agree with a path to citizenship for this cohort. They point out that “these are people, after all, who often have spent little time in the country where they were born, speak only English and have been brought up as Americans. To qualify for DACA protections, they had to be in school or have graduated or to have been in the military.”

Read more »

_____

And Finally, From the Center:

Rick Klein and MaryAlice Parks in ABC News:

“The world according to Donald J. Trump is a constantly shifting place, filled with tenuous alliances and mind-twisting deals that may be more or less than they appear at first glance. In pursuing a deal with Democrats on hot-button immigration issues, Trump is challenging forces in both parties in ways that are fundamental to their identities.”

The ABC analysts look at the political stakes for congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle. They say that President Trump has “shown his interest is not in bipartisanship but in cutting deals that enhance his own standing. By bringing Pelosi and Schumer close, he may be boxing them in.” That’s the concern he lays out for Democrats. For Republicans, the calculus appears a bit more obvious: Mr. Trump is “setting aside a key campaign promise in the interest of a proposal that immigration hard-liners consider an apostasy.”

Read more »

_____

David Graham in The Atlantic

“Trump’s position on DACA has been softening for some time, but his apparent deal with Pelosi and Schumer, and his tweeted support for allowing Dreamers to stay, cement a monumental shift.”

Mr. Graham looks back at his reporting from the 2016 campaign trail to understand some of the anger and frustration on the right over the seeming change in policy positions from the Trump administration. As one man in Fayetteville, N.C., is quoted as saying at the time: “Everyone else is a puppet. He says what he wants to say. Everyone else is controlled by political correctness.” Mr. Graham compiles quotes like these alongside the statements made at Trump campaign rallies and concludes that “it turns out the candidate’s coarse rhetoric really was just rhetoric, and Trump isn’t really all that different.”

Read more »

_____

Have thoughts about this collection? Email feedback to ourpicks@nytimes.com.