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Federal judge’s invalidation of the deferred action program for children’s arrivals is “deeply disappointing,” President Biden said on Saturday – calling on Senate Democrats to use a legislative sleight of hand to protect those without – papers that were brought to the United States as children.
“This move… relegates hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to an uncertain future,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House.
“The Ministry of Justice intends to appeal this decision,” he added.
A Texas federal judge ruled on Friday that President Obama illegally started the DACA program in 2012 when he issued an executive order banning the deportation of illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States before the age of 18.
Judge Andrew Hanen of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas found that Obama’s order violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which dictates how agencies make and implement regulations.
“As popular as this program may be, the proper starting point for the DACA program was, and is, Congress,” Hanen wrote.
Biden, in his statement, recognized the legal logic in calling on Congress to enact the program.
“Only Congress can guarantee a permanent solution by granting a path to citizenship for dreamers,” Biden said. “It is my fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally bring safety to all Dreamers, who have lived too long in fear.”
Leading Democrats said on Friday that their only hope of pushing a broad immigration reform agenda through a divided Congress would be to cram it into a budget reconciliation bill, Politico reported.
Such a budget bill could pass a party line vote without the backing of Republicans – but adding an immigration measure to the package might not be allowed under complex Senate rules on reconciliation measures .
Hanen on Friday ordered the Biden administration to stop approving applications for the DACA program, which covers at least 616,000 people and allows them to work legally in the United States without fear of deportation.
But, the judge noted, current DACA recipients will not be affected immediately.
“The order does not require [the Department of Homeland Security] or the Department of Justice to take any immigration, deportation or criminal action against any DACA beneficiary, applicant or other individual that they would not otherwise take, ”he wrote.
The decision is the result of a lawsuit brought by Texas and eight other Republican-led states that have filed a lawsuit to shut down DACA, arguing that Obama bypassed Congress to establish it.
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