WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump expressed his pessimism on Monday about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program being ended through a hearing at the highly progressive 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where the case will be tried.

In a statement to the White House press corps, Trump offered another insult to the judiciary: “Nothing’s as bad as the 9th Circuit. It’s really sad when every single case filed against us is in the 9th Circuit.” On several occasions it has ruled against Trump policies.

That court of appeals is in charge of deciding on the future of the DACA program, which Trump wanted to end by March 5, and which currently protects from deportation about 690,000 young people brought into the country illegally by their parents.

In Trump’s opinion, “there won’t be any surprise...this is in the 9th Circuit – we lose, we lose, we lose, and then we do fine in the Supreme Court.”

“We’ll see what happens from there,” the president said.

That was Trump’s reaction to a Supreme Court’s refusal to hear a case on the DACA decision and in so doing set a national precedent.

Without a national precedent, the ruling stands in which Judge William Alsup in a California federal court ordered Trump to reactivate the DACA program across the US while there are still cases pending on the matter in courts around the country.

Last September, Trump announced the end of DACA, but gave Congress until March 5 to find a permanent solution for the thousands of undocumented youths protected by the immigration program, passed in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama.

The Trump administration also expressed its disagreement with the Supreme Court in a statement by White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah, who insisted that DACA “is clearly unlawful” because it “provides work permits and myriad government benefits to illegal immigrants en masse.”

Monday’s Supreme Court decision represents a small victory for defenders of immigrants, because until the California appeals court reaches a verdict on the case – which could take a year – the ruling of the San Francisco judge plus a similar one by a New York judge to block the demise of DACA will remain the law of the land.