White House condemns ruling on program
SAN DIEGO >> The White House on Wednesday sharply criticized a federal judge’s ruling that the Trump administration must resume a program that has shielded hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.
While the government has 90 days to restate its arguments before the order takes effect, presidential press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders characterized the ruling as “good news” for smuggling organizations and criminal networks and “horrible news for our national security.”
If Tuesday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in Washington survives the three-month reprieve, it would be a new setback for the Trump team because it would require the administration to accept requests from first-time applicants for the Obama-era program.
Two nationwide injunctions earlier this year applied only to renewal requests for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA recipients are commonly referred to as “Dreamers,” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act that would have provided similar protections for young immigrants.
Siding with Princeton University and the NAACP, Bates said the administration’s decision in September to phase out the program over six months relied on “meager legal reasoning.” He invited the Department of Homeland Security to try again.
The judge wrote that the administration’s explanation was “particularly egregious” because it didn’t mention that many of the hundreds of thousands covered by the program had obtained jobs and pursued education based on the assumption that they would be allowed to renew.
DHS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The administration contends the program started in 2012 is a misuse of executive power and that it had to act because Texas and other states threatened to sue.
In January, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled that the administration failed to justify ending the program. A federal judge in New York issued a similar ruling in February; a judge in Maryland sided with the administration.