DOJ to appeal DACA decision directly to Supreme Court News
DOJ to appeal DACA decision directly to Supreme Court

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] announced Tuesday that it plans to seek Supreme Court review [press release] of a trial court’s decision to block the rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) [official website] program, which gives undocumented immigrants brought into the US as children, known as “Dreamers,” protection from deportation. The DOJ also filed a notice of appeal seeking review before the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Last week, Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] temporarily blocked [order, PDF] the Trump administration from ending DACA, declaring the administration’s decision arbitrary and capricious,” and based on a flawed legal premise.

In the DOJ press release, Attorney General Jeff Sessions [official website] said:

It is clear that Acting Secretary Duke acted within her discretion to rescind this policy with an orderly wind down. This was done both to give Congress an opportunity to act on this issue and in light of ongoing litigation in which the injunction against DAPA had already been affirmed by the Supreme Court.

The DOJ’s filing is an action rarely taken in lawsuits, asking that the US Supreme Court take the appeal of the injunction directly, skipping over the Ninth Circuit of Appeals. Sessions has stated that the DOJ has taken this action so that “this issue may be resolved quickly and fairly for all the parties involved.”