Federal appeals court halts end of DACA

WASHINGTON – A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump cannot end an Obama administration program that protects undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit agreed with a federal district judge’s decision in January that Trump lacked the authority to eliminate the program – a proposal the president made last year in hopes of prodding Congress to act.

“Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that the rescission of DACA – at least as justified on this record – is arbitrary, capricious or otherwise not in accordance with law,” the three-member panel said.

“In a world where the government can remove only a small percentage of the undocumented noncitizens present in this country in any year,” the panel said, DACA lets it “devote much-needed resources to enforcement priorities such as threats to national security, rather than blameless and economically productive young people with clean criminal records.”

The decision leaves in place for now the popular Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA, which has protected more than 700,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation and enabled them to get work permits.

But the Justice Department is likely to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which now has five reliably conservative justices. The high court in February refused to leapfrog the appeals court’s review of Judge William Alsup’s decision.

“In California and across our nation, Dreamers significantly enrich our communities as scholars, entrepreneurs, first responders and much more,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said. “This fight, of course, is far from over. We will continue to defend Dreamers and DACA all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.”

The opinion strikes down an argument often made by the Trump administration: that DACA was an unconstitutional “end run” around Congress, which has blocked the DREAM Act, which has been introduced since 2001 but never has passed both chambers.