A US federal district court judge in New York on Friday ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to reinstate the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The DACA program allows people who immigrated to the United States illegally as children to apply for a forbearance of removal, and permits them authorization to work and access other federal benefits. In 2017 DHS under President Trump issued a memorandum terminating the popular program, but this past summer the Supreme Court ruled that DHS acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner when it issued the memorandum and therefore could not end the DACA program.
Following that decision, acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf issued a memo ordering the department to reject all pending and future DACA requests and shortening the forbearance time from two years to one. However, Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York ruled in November that, because DHS had not followed its own procedures in appointing an acting secretary, Wolf lacked the authority to act as head of the department and his memo was invalid.
On Friday Garaufis wrote that because Wolf had acted without authority, not only is his memo vacated but “In light of the vacatur, all parties agree that the DACA program is currently governed by its terms as they existed prior to the attempted rescission of September 2017.” In addition, Garaufis ordered that DHS post public notice on its website and all relevant agency websites by Monday that “it is accepting first-time requests for consideration of deferred action under DACA, renewal requests, and advance parole requests” under the terms of the DACA program as it existed in the Obama administration. He also ordered DHS to reinstate the two-year permits for applicants.
New York state attorney general Letitia James, one of seventeen state attorneys general litigating against the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the DACA program, said about yesterday’s ruling, “Every time the outgoing administration tried to use young immigrants as political scapegoats, they defiled the values of our nation. The court’s order makes clear that fairness, inclusion, and compassion matter.”
