Source: The Guardian US
[dropcap]A[/dropcap] judge has blocked Donald Trump from ending an Obama-era program that shielded from deportation children brought to the United States illegally by their parents.US district judge William Alsup ruled in San Francisco on Tuesday that the administration must “maintain the Daca program on a nationwide basis” while litigation over Trump’s decision unfolds.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program has allowed nearly 800,000 immigrants to work and go to school in the US without fear of deportation since it was authorised by former president Barack Obama in 2012.
The Trump administration decided in September to rescind the Daca program, placing the fate of hundreds of thousands of the young immigrants – known as Dreamers – in the hands of Congress. The announcement prompted several states, organisations and individuals to file lawsuits.
The administration announced the decision on 5 September 2017 and said applicants had 30 days to respond. So while the program has not expired yet – that will happen on 5 March – the deadline had passed to renew applications, thus sealing the applicants’ fate.
In his ruling, Alsup wrote that previous recipients of Daca protections who failed to register by the deadline must be allowed to renew their status in the program.
However, he said the federal government did not have to process new applications from people who had never before received protection under the program.
Nearly 22,000 Daca recipients did not successfully apply to renew their eligibility, according to a study by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning thinktank in Washington.
The researchers estimate that on average 122 Daca recipients per day will lose their legal protections in the 181 days between 5 September 2017 and 5 March.
“In terminating Daca, the administrative record failed to address the 689,800 young people who had come to rely on Daca to live and to work in this country,” Alsup wrote.
“These individuals had submitted substantial personal identifying information to the government, paid hefty fees and planned their lives according to the dictates of Daca.
“The administrative record includes no consideration to the disruption a rescission would have on the lives of Daca recipients, let alone their families, employers and employees, schools and communities.”
The ruling comes while Trump and US congressional leaders are embroiled in a tense negotiation over how to protect the young immigrants. If the court order stands, it could ease some of the pressure on Democrats and Republicans in Congress to find a legislative solution before the program ends.
Earlier on Tuesday Trump convened a bipartisan meeting with lawmakers at the White House to discuss the fate of the Dreamers. He expressed sympathy for their plight and called on lawmakers to craft a “bill of love” that would enshrine the Daca permanently and offer the young immigrants an eventual path to US citizenship.
Yet he also reiterated his demands for a border wall, a central plank of his hardline immigration platform during the 2016 presidential election and a nonstarter for Democrats.
After the meeting, a number of Democrats and Republicans in attendance said Trump conceded privately – after the cameras were turned off – that a border wall did not need to be a physical barrier from “sea to shining-sea.”
But later on Tuesday, Trump appeared to revert to his initial view, tweeting: “As I made very clear today, our country needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval.”
The White House is also demanding that a deal include reforms to the legal migration system, ending rules that allow immigrants to sponsor relatives and the elimination of the state department’s diversity visa lottery program.
Democrats have agreed to compromise on border security but have warned that certain demands could derail negotiations, potentially threatening a government shutdown over the issue if they withhold support from a must-pass spending bill next week.
The Trump administration could appeal the ruling, which could then be appealed to the US supreme court. Representatives for the White House, the department of justice and the department of homeland security could not be reached immediately for comment.
