A federal appeals court said Wednesday that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy violates US immigration law, dealing a blow to an Obama-era program which provides protection from deportation and work permits to nearly 600,000 “Dreamer” immigrants who do not have legal status.
A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the Obama administration lacked the legal authority to create DACA in 2012, affirming a July 2021 ruling by a federal judge in Texas that bar the Biden administration from enrolling new immigrants in the decade-old program.
Despite its conclusion, the appeals court did not order the Biden administration to completely shut down DACA or stop processing renewal applications, instead choosing to uphold an order by U.S. Judge Andrew Hanen which left the policy intact for current beneficiaries. The government, however, will continue to be barred from approving first-time DACA applications.
The appeals court sent the case back to Hanen, ordering him to review regulations the Biden administration filed in August to address legal challenges to the Obama administration’s decision to create DACA through of a note, rather than a rule open to public comment. The regulations are currently scheduled to come into effect on October 31.
The Justice Department, which represents the federal government in the lawsuits, did not immediately say whether it would ask the Supreme Court to halt Wednesday’s ruling. The Biden administration is likely to file a formal appeal, paving the way for the conservative-leaning high court to issue a final ruling on the legality of DACA next year.
In its decision Wednesday, the three-judge panel concluded that DACA had the same legal flaws as another Obama-era program that would have offered protection from deportation to the unauthorized immigrant parents of U.S. citizens and U.S. citizenship holders. the green card The program, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), was blocked in court and never implemented.
“Like DAPA, DACA” is decreed by the careful plan of Congress; the program is “manifestly contrary to statute,” the ruling says.
Like Hanen, the Texas judge who ruled DACA illegal last summer, the appeals court expressed sympathy for immigrants currently enrolled in the program in justifying its decision to allow the government to continue accepting renewal requests.
“We also recognize that DACA has had profound significance for recipients and many others in the ten years since its enactment,” the court said.
As of June 30, 594,120 immigrants who were brought to the United States as children were enrolled in DACA, half of whom live in California, Texas and Illinois, according to data released by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that administers the program.
Wednesday’s court ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2018 by Texas and other Republican-controlled states that have argued that DACA was an overreach of the federal government’s immigration powers.
While DACA allows recipients to legally live and work in the US without fear of deportation, it does not qualify them for permanent legal status or citizenship. DACA registrants had to show that they had arrived in the United States at age 16 and before June 2007, had attended an American school or served in the military and had no serious criminal record.
The court ruling could create a renewed sense of urgency in Congress to pass legislation that would put program beneficiaries on a path to citizenship, a proposal with robust bipartisan support among lawmakers and the American public.
For more than two decades, however, proposals to legalize Dreamers have died in Congress amid intense partisan gridlock over other immigration issues. In the current Congress, Democrats would have to accept border security measures to secure the necessary number of Republican votes to pass this legalization bill.
More Camilo Montoya-Galvez
Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration reporter for CBS News. Based in Washington, he covers politics and immigration policy.