Judge rules vs Trump on ‘Dreamers’ program
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to end a program protecting some young immigrants from deportation, calling the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s rationale against the program “arbitrary and capricious.”
US District Judge John Bates in Washington on Tuesday wrote that the decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) “was unlawful and must be set aside.”
Bates wrote that DHS’ decision “was predicated primarily on its legal judgment that the program was unlawful. That legal judgment was virtually unexplained, however, and so it cannot support the agency’s decision.”
Bates gave the DHS 90 days to “better explain its view that the DACA is unlawful.” If the department cannot come up with a better explanation, he wrote, it “must accept and process new as well as renewal DACA applications.”
The DACA allowed immigrants brought to the US illegally as children, known as “Dreamers,” to stay and work legally under renewable permits.
US President Donald Trump announced last year that he would end the program started by his predecessor Barack Obama. It was officially rescinded in March, but the DHS is continuing to issue renewals because of previous court orders.
Bates’ ruling came in a pair of cases whose lead plaintiffs are the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Princeton University. He is the third judge to rule against administration plans to end the program.