Trump administration to give one-year Daca extension to some recipients
The Trump administration will allow so-called Dreamers to renew deportation protections for a year while it reviews a supreme court ruling before a fresh attempt to kill the program in question, a senior administration official said on Tuesday.
Hundreds of thousands of Dreamers live in the US without documentation, after entering as children. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) was put in place by Barack Obama and some 644,000 people are enrolled.
The Trump review follows the ruling last month that found the administration had erred in the way it decided to end the program.
The administration plans to continue its existing policy of not accepting new applicants, in place since 2017, the official told Reuters. But the administration will extend eligibility by a year for those whose protection from deportation was due to expire, as long as they do not have a criminal record.
“For anyone who refiles, if they are eligible and were set to expire, we will renew them on a case-by-case basis into the next year for an extension,” the official said.
The decision means the program will remain in place through the presidential election, in which Trump is fighting for a second term against Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has made his hardline stance on legal and illegal immigration a central platform of his presidency and his re-election campaign.
Daca is increasingly supported by the public. A February Reuters/Ipsos poll found 64% of US adults supported its core tenets. A similar December 2014 poll found 47% support.
The supreme court left the door open for Trump to attempt again to rescind the program, ruling only that the administration had not met procedural requirements and its actions were “arbitrary and capricious”.
The administration is due to file paperwork with the district court in Maryland on Tuesday. The decision to not accept new applications will probably face more legal challenges.
The official said the administration would conduct “an exhaustive review” of the memos it initially used to justify winding down the program.
“We’re going to review all of that and all the underlying communications that informed those documents, so that when the administration next acts on Daca, it will be anchored on this comprehensive review,” the official said.
The official said it was unclear how long the review would take.
In an interview with Noticias Telemundo earlier this month, Trump said he would soon unveil an immigration measure that would include some protections for Daca.
“We’re working out the legal complexities right now,” he said, “but I’m going to be signing a very major immigration bill as an executive order, which the supreme court now, because of the Daca decision, has given me the power to do that.”
Trump’s interpretation of the meaning of the supreme court ruling – that it can allow him to govern without Congress – has proved highly controversial.