JUDGE ORDERS RETURN OF DACA PROGRAM
Administration directed to begin accepting first-time applications U-T NEWS SERVICES
Thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United
States as children are immediately eligible to apply for an
Obama-era program that grants them work permits, a federal judge ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas
Garaufis in Brooklyn, N.Y., said he was fully restoring the 8-year-old
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program to the days before the Trump administration tried to end it in September 2017. He ordered the Department of Homeland Security to post a public notice by Monday to accept first-time applications and ensure that work permits are valid for two years.
As many as 300,000 new applicants could now be eligible, according to the lawyers who sought the reinstatement.
Secretary memo Acting in July Chad Homeland reducing Wolf had DACA Security issued re- a cipients’ work permits to one year, but Garaufis ruled last month that Wolf had unlawfully ascended to cated the the agency’s memo. top job and va
“The court believes that these additional remedies are reasonable,” Garaufis said. “Indeed, the government has assured the court that a public notice along the lines described is forthcoming.”
Garaufis, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, also said the government must find a way to contact all immigrants who are elthem igible cheered though President-elect Advocates of for the they the the change. long-awaited have program Joe for expected Biden immigrants to will inform ruling, that fully restore he thing takes he the has office DACA pledged in January, program to do. some- when
“dreamers” But the immigrants are not necessarily known as in the clear. Attorneys general in
Texas and other states have asked a federal judge to declare DACA unlawful and to provide for an orderly wind down of it. A hearing in
that case is scheduled for later this month.
“This is a really big day for DACA recipients and immigrant young people,” said Karen Tumlin, director of the Justice Action Center, who litigated the class-action case. “It opens the door for more than a million immigrant youth who have been unfairly denied their chance to apply for DACA.”
Approximately 640,000 immigrants are currently enrolled in the DACA program. The Center for American Progress, a think tank, estimates that at least 300,000 immigrants, including new high school graduates, have been shut out since the Trump administration stopped accepting new applications in September 2017 as part of an effort to phase out the program.
Another 65,800 immigrants had their work permits reduced to one year only.
DHS officials and officials with the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment after the ruling Friday.
Biden was vice president when President Barack
Obama created the DACA program in 2012. Biden has called President Donald Trump’s efforts to end it “cruel.”
Under the rules, immigrants who cleared a background check, pursued their studies and paid fees to obtain work permits could stay in the United States. Trump has called the program an “illegal amnesty” and his ad
ministration fought phase it out by this year.
Biden has vowed to restore the DACA program when he takes office, but a legislative solution that would permanently allow these immigrants to live and work legally in the United States remains elusive, leaving their status uncertain.
If the judge’s order still stands by the time Biden
to
takes office in January, the new president would need to do nothing to make good on his promise.
But Biden is certain to face intense pressure from immigrant groups to fight for a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws that would take care of the “dreamers” and millions of other immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
Comprehensive legislation, including one that would provide a path to citizenship for some immigrants, would be less vulnerable to legal challenges than DACA, which Obama created using the executive powers of his office after Congress repeatedly refused to act.
But securing passage of a bill that includes citizenship could be difficult for Biden, especially if Republicans still control the Senate after two runoff elections in Georgia early in January.
Americans have historically considered DACA beneficiaries to be among the most sympathetic categories of immigrants. Having violated immigration laws through no fault of their own by being brought to the United States as minors, they are required to have a high school diploma or GED, unless they have served in the military, and they must maintain a clean criminal record to hold on to their status.
In a Pew survey conducted in June, about threequarters of respondents, including majorities of both Democrats and Republicans, favored extending to “dreamer” a pathway to permanent legal status.
The program has had generational impact. Researchers estimate that 250,000 U.S.-born children have at least one parent who is enrolled in DACA, and that about 1.5 million people in the United States live with a beneficiary of the program.