A federal judge in Maryland on Friday ordered the Trump administration to completely reinstate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era initiative that protects hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States from deportation as children.
Judge Paul Grimm’s order of the US District Court in Maryland requires the US Department of Homeland Security to restore DACA’s operation before the administration attempted to rescind it in the fall of 2017. A Supreme Court opinion last month prevented DHS from going ahead with its plans to dismantle DACA, but Friday’s order explicitly directs the department to open the program to hundreds of thousands of potential new applicants.
The Supreme Court decision in June shelved the 2017 DHS memo that would have terminated DACA and affirmed a lower court decision requiring the complete reinstatement of the program. But there was a subsequent debate over whether the administration had to comply with the opinion before the higher court issued a certified judgment, which has yet to be published.
While several courts have required that you process DACA renewal applications for the past three years, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has not accepted requests from those who have never enrolled in the program since late 2017, even if applicants met the requirements, which include not having serious crimes or serious misdemeanors on record.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants who currently meet DACA prerequisites could obtain protection from deportation if USCIS begins to adjudicate initial petitions, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. This population includes approximately 66,000 teens who met the DACA age requirement after the Trump administration moved to end the program.
However, the USCIS has yet to commit to accepting and adjudicating the initial petitions, despite multiple requests to clarify its position after the Supreme Court decision, which determined that the administration’s effort to end DACA violated federal administrative law. As of Friday afternoon, USCIS judges processing DACA cases had received no guidance on initial requests, two agency employees who requested anonymity told CBS News.
Neither USCIS nor DHS responded to requests for comment on Friday’s order. A spokesman for the Justice Department, which represents the federal government in litigation, did not comment.
More than 640,000 immigrants are currently enrolled in DACA, which does not provide a path to US citizenship. To qualify for the protections first offered by President Obama in 2012, these young immigrants had to meet certain requirements, such as having arrived in the US before the age of 16, having lived in the country since at least 2007 and having earned an American high school diploma, a GED, or serving honorably in the military.
Nick Katz, an attorney for CASA de Maryland, the lead group in the Maryland case, said Friday’s order is a “vindication” of his organization’s opinion that DACA needed to be fully reinstated after the Court’s opinion Supreme in June, as well as a decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that also found the termination of the program was “arbitrary and capricious.”
“Today’s order leaves absolutely no doubt that USCIS needs to start processing new DACA applications, which they have been unable to do despite being asked to do so,” Katz told CBS News.
Katz said USCIS has not responded to several DACA requests that her group recently filed on behalf of youth who never had protection. He said CASA de Maryland has identified hundreds of young immigrants in the Washington, DC area who are eligible for DACA and eager to apply for the first time. Katz added that not allowing them to enroll in the program would run counter to constitutional and democratic principles.
“We are a nation based on the rule of law, and this administration needs to accept this and accept the court’s decision,” he added.
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