Judge orders DACA restarted

Delay until Aug. 23 gives government opportunity to appeal

A federal judge late Friday ordered the Trump administration to restart in full the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, multiple media outlets reported.

Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia affirmed his earlier finding that the Department of Homeland Security failed to offer a reasonable argument for ending DACA.

The restart won’t be immediate. Bates said Friday that the order would be delayed until Aug. 23 to allow the government to appeal, but he denied a Justice Department motion to reconsider his earlier decision.

“The court has already once given DHS the opportunity to remedy these deficiencies — either by providing a coherent explanation of its legal opinion or by reissuing its decision for bona fide policy reasons that would preclude judicial review,” Bates said, “So it will not do so again.”

Bates in April became the third federal judge to order the administration to restart renewals for people previously approved for DACA. In a 25-page opinion Friday, Bates, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, rejected the administration’s argument that the original decision to end DACA remained sound.

He criticized a June memo issued by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in which she said she stood by the legal rationale laid out in a Sept. 5 directive from then-acting Secretary Elaine Duke.

Bates said the Nielsen memo, like Duke’s before it, “offers nothing even remotely approaching a considered legal assessment that this court could subject to judicial review.”

If Friday’s ruling goes into effect later this month, the administration will be required to accept new applications from people who meet DACA’S eligibility requirements.