A federal judge this week blocked the Trump Administration effort to dismantle an Obama-era program to protect children illegally brought to the U.S. by their undocumented aliens, known as DACA.
The district court ruling brought a storm of criticism, including tweets from President Trump saying it “shows everyone how broken and unfair our court system is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts.”
In this instance, the party seeking help from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will be the U.S. Justice Department.
The nationwide injunction requires immigration authorities to continue processing DACA renewal applications, but it does not require the government to issue new DACA work permits.
DACA, stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and it offered relief from deportation and work authorization to young people, known as dreamers, brought to the U.S. by their parents and raised here.
On September 5, 2017, the Trump Administration announced it was ending the program and phasing it out over the ensuing six months, potentially subjecting 800,000 of the dreamers to loss of status and deportation.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup on Tuesday issued the injunction against the government’s ending of the program, which is due to cease in March under Trump’s deadline.
Alsup ruled the DACA plaintiffs have shown they are likely to succeed in their challenge to the DACA rescission order as “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion.” He rejected the government’s rationale that DACA was based on a flawed legal premise.
He pointed out that Obama’s former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano explained that the purpose of DACA was to direct DHS resources on high priority targets and not focus on low priority people like the dreamers.
Napolitano is now President of the University of California and is one of the parties suing the Trump Administration.
Meanwhile, leaders in Congress met with President Trump on Tuesday, the day Alsup issued the ruling, to negotiate some resolution to the DACA standoff.
Case: Regents of UC v. Department of Homeland Security, No. 17-5211
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