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Court Rules DACA Unlawful, Lets Protections Remain For Now

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled as unlawful an Obama-era program to protect undocumented migrants who came to the country as children, though current members of the program will continue to have those protections pending further appeals.  

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, implemented by former President Barack Obama in 2012, allows eligible candidates to apply for and renew temporary permits to live and work in the U.S.

About 540,000 people are currently enrolled in the program, but it has faced significant legal challenges from states and administrative challenges during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

Friday’s unanimous decision from the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana agreed that DACA is “substantively unlawful” but let current DACA recipients continue to use and renew their temporary permits until the appeals process concludes.

“Pursuant to the court’s order, [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] will continue to accept and process DACA renewal requests and accompanying applications for employment authorization,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services explained in an advisory following the ruling. “Current grants of DACA and related Employment Authorization Documents remain valid until they expire, unless individually terminated.”

A 2021 ruling in the same suit by U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen barred the U.S. from admitting any other candidates into DACA pending appeal. Friday’s decision upheld that action.

The ruling came just three days before Trump’s inauguration. He had pledged to deport migrants on a mass scale if elected, and on Monday he signed a slew of executive orders to bar asylum for people arriving at the southern border, to suspend the Refugee Admissions Program and to declare migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border to be a national emergency in order to unlock funding for building a border wall without congressional approval.

It’s unclear how Friday’s decision will align with those policies. Trump attempted to undo DACA in 2017, but eventually was thwarted by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that his administration had not offered “a reasoned explanation for its action,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his 2020 ruling.

Following legal challenges to Trump’s attempts to rescind the program, Texas in 2018 sued the federal government, arguing that DACA was unlawful because it was established by procedure rather than codified in statute.

Judge Hanen sided with Texas in his 2021 decision, barring new applicants from the program, but an update to the program by the administration of former President Joe Biden sent the issue back to his court for review before it could be appealed.

The Biden revision essentially re-established DACA and sought comment from the public in an attempt to shore up that legal vulnerability with the original Obama policy.

Texas and eight other conservative states brought the challenge back to the lower court, and Judge Hanen found that the program was still unlawful, even with the public comment period, leading to the second appeal to the Fifth Circuit and Friday’s decision.

But last month, Trump said in a Meet the Press interview that he would be willing to work with Democrats to allow DACA recipients to stay in the country, a claim that has been met with skepticism by some members of the program.

Still, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who represented Texas in the suit, cheered the ruling and suggested that he and President Trump would find solidarity on the issue.

“I look forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump to ensure that the rule of law is restored, and the illegal immigration crisis is finally stopped,” said Paxton in a prepared statement on Friday.

Sam Stockbridge
Sam Stockbridge
Sam Stockbridge is an award-winning reporter covering politics and the legislature. When he isn’t wonking out at the Capitol, you can find him birding or cycling around Austin.

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