Judge blocks Trump’s move to end Dreamers scheme for immigrants
San Francisco, Jan. 10: A federal judge on Tuesday night temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s decision to end a programme protecting young immigrants from deportation.
US district judge William Alsup granted a request by California and other plaintiffs to prevent President Donald Trump from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program while their lawsuits play out in court.
Mr Alsup said lawyers in favor of DACA clearly demonstrated that the young immigrants “were likely to suffer serious, irreparable harm” without court action.
The judge also said the lawyers have a strong chance of succeeding at trial. DACA has protected about 800,000 people who were brought to the US illegally as children or came with families who overstayed visas. The programme includes hundreds of thousands of college- age students.
US attorney- general Jeff Sessions announced in September that the program would be phased out, saying former President Barack Obama had exceeded his authority when he implemented it in 2012.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice said the judge’s decision doesn’t change the fact that the program was an illegal circumvention of Congress, and it is within the agency’s power to end it.
“The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend this position, and looks forward to vindicating its position in further litigation,” department spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement.
Sessions’ move to phase pout DACA sparked a flurry of lawsuits nationwide. Mr Alsup considered five separate lawsuits filed in Northern California, including one by the California and three other states, and another by the governing board of the University of California school system.