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Protesters hold up illuminated signs at a rally in support of the Deferred Action Program for Arrivals of Children (DACA), or the Dream Act, outside the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 18, 2018.
Zach Gibson | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A South Texas federal judge on Friday ordered the Biden administration to stop granting new applications to the Obama-era immigration program that protected hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.
The order said the deferred action program for children’s arrivals, known as DACA, was “created in violation of the law and the existence of which violates the law”.
But current DACA beneficiaries will not immediately have their status withdrawn as a result of the order, the judge noted.
The move, which jeopardizes the agenda President Joe Biden had sought to preserve, came as media reported arrests at the US-Mexico border reached their highest level in more than a decade.
Former President Donald Trump had sought to end DACA, but his efforts were blocked in 2020 by the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 that his order to end the program was illegally “arbitrary and capricious.”
On Friday afternoon, in a five-page order, US District Judge Andrew Hanen said: “As of this date, the United States of America, its departments, agencies, officers, agents and employees are by the is prohibited from administering the DACA program.
These entities are also prohibited from reimplementing the program without complying with another law that governs federal regulatory process, Hanen’s order said.
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The judge’s order said the DACA program, created in 2012 by a political memorandum from President Barack Obama’s homeland security chief Janet Napolitano, had been “illegally implemented.”
But as hundreds of thousands of DACA beneficiaries now rely on DACA, Hanen’s order explained that “it is not fair that a government program that has created such dependency suddenly ends.”
“Nothing in this injunction should be construed as directing DHS or any other government entity to revoke or otherwise terminate DACA status for anyone who is currently, on that date, a DACA beneficiary in good standing,” Hanen wrote. .
“Further, nothing in this injunction obliges DHS or the Department of Justice to take immigration, deportation or criminal action against any DACA beneficiary, applicant or other individual who would not otherwise be taken,” he wrote.
Omar Jadwat, head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrant Rights Project, said in a statement Hanen’s decision “is wrong and is subject to appeal.”
Jadwat called on the Democratic-majority Congress to pave the way for citizenship for “Dreamers” and other undocumented migrants in the United States
“The future of dreamers should not be in the hands of the courts,” he said.
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