PHOENIX – The US government said Friday that it is putting all new DACA requests in a “pending” bucket as officials decide whether they will try to end the program again, meaning none have been accepted into the program. for young immigrants even though the Supreme Court last ruled month in which it was incorrectly terminated.
The latest occurred during a telephone hearing in federal court in Maryland by United States District Judge Paul W. Grimm, who last week ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program should be reinstated at its original form, before President Donald Trump attempted to end it in September. 2017
Immigrant advocates who sued the government for their attempt to end DACA say the new decisions in the case, including that of the Supreme Court, mean that the government must continue to accept and consider the applications for the first time. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had only been accepting renewals for DACA beneficiaries who were already enrolled prior to September 5, 2017.
DACA allows young immigrants who were brought into the country as children to work legally and protects them from deportation. About 650,000 are enrolled, but another 66,000 now meet the age requirements to join, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan group of experts.
The Supreme Court ruled last month that the Trump administration did not properly end the program. Management can still finish it, but it has to do it differently.
Lawyers for the nonprofit advocacy group Casa de Maryland, which has filed one of several lawsuits challenging the end of the program, meanwhile, say the Supreme Court ruling and two others mean DACA should return to form. original, accepting new applications also as applications to travel abroad, known as advanced parole.
A government attorney said Friday that USCIS has not updated its website to reflect that it is accepting new applications, and that it has rejected some new applications for incorrect reasons and others because they were not completed correctly or information is missing.
But attorney Stephen Michael Pezzi said the agency is generally accepting new applications, putting them on a provisional basis as the administration decides what to do with DACA.
That means new applicants will not be approved unless a court orders it or the administration decides to keep the program.
Grimm did not seem inclined to think about whether the government should accept or reject new applications while deciding what to do with the program, but rebuked him for not having updated information on his website and for not explaining the rejections to applicants who were flawed in their application. , like a missing signature.
“I think frankly, the agency should be the first to want that corrected and I think we should have some idea of when that will be corrected,” Grimm said.
Grimm told the government that he would like the website to be updated within 30 days, and he gave his lawyers until next week to determine if USCIS can develop any kind of process in which they acknowledge receipt of new requests for applicants know their status. .
