Texas federal judge rules DACA illegal: NPR

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DACA counted about 636,000 active recipients – known as DREAMers – at the end of last year. Callaghan OHare/The Washington Post hides caption via Getty Images

Toggle caption Callaghan OHare / The Washington Post via Getty Images

DACA counted about 636,000 active recipients – known as DREAMers – at the end of last year.

Callaghan OHare/The Washington Post via Getty Images

A federal judge in Texas has ruled against the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, dealing a blow to an Obama-era policy that has protected more than 800,000 undocumented young immigrants from deportation since 2012.

The largely anticipated decision leaves the fate of thousands of program beneficiaries, known as DREAMers, in the hands of Congress, the Biden administration and the Supreme Court with conservatives enjoying a 6-3 majority.

U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen ruled in favor of nine conservative-led states, including Texas, blocking the Biden administration from accepting new DACA applicants — saying the program was illegal.

However, the ruling allows immigrants who are currently protected by the program to maintain their status while the case goes through the appeal process.

The Biden administration has pledged to protect DACA or put something similar in its place.

“This consideration, along with the government’s assertion that it is willing and willing to attempt to remedy the legal flaws of the DACA programme, indicates that redress will not be served by a complete and immediate moratorium on DACA,” Hanin wrote in the ruling.

DACA supporters are expected to appeal the decision to the Fifth Circuit.

The Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which helps represent 22 DACA recipients serving as defendants in the case, prepared for such an outcome, writing in a March memo that such a ruling likely would not result in an immediate halt to the program.

“Even if the court rules to invalidate the 2012 memorandum establishing DACA, all parties to the case agree that DACA should continue in the near future while the court considers appropriate treatment,” she said.

Friday’s decision ensures that the matter will be settled by either the US Supreme Court or Congress.

Saved on Tech in 2020

DACA was implemented in 2012, under the Obama administration. Without providing a pathway to citizenship, it enables some young immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as children to live and work in the country for renewable two-year periods.

To be eligible, individuals must have arrived in the United States before the age of 16, have resided continuously in the country since June 2007, and be under 30 at the time of the program. They must be either a current student, high school graduate, GED holder, or veteran veteran of the United States Armed Forces, and must not “pose a national security threat to a public safety.”

The policy counted more than 636,000 active recipients at the end of last year, and had significant bipartisan support: A 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that 74% of Americans favor a law that grants permanent legal status to immigrants who come to the United States. illegally as children.

Roberto Gonzalez, a Harvard Graduate School professor who has spent the past two decades studying undocumented youth, spoke to NPR’s Switch last June about the positive, quantifiable effects of DACA on recipients, from access to health care to ability to support Family members financially to improve mental health.

“The evidence is clear and indisputable,” he said. “DACA has had a tremendous impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people over the past eight years.”

However, the program has been at the center of a protracted legal battle almost since its inception. Former President Donald Trump, who said he would find a way to protect DREAMers without providing details, announced in 2017 that his administration would end the program, prompting challenges from US district courts in several states and Washington, DC.

The Supreme Court sided with DREAMers when it ruled on the case in 2020, blocking the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the program more for reasons of process than substance.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing to the majority, said administration officials did not provide detailed justifications for repealing DACA, making their decision “arbitrary and capricious.”

“We do not decide whether DACA or its abolition are sound policies,” Roberts wrote. “The wisdom of those decisions is none of our business. Here we only address whether management has complied with the procedural requirements in law that insist on a ‘reasonable explanation for its action’.”

Dream and immigrant rights advocates celebrated the court’s decision as a short-term victory, which mitigated the immediate threat of deportation for thousands of people, but left the door open for the president to cancel the program through appropriate action.

Several Democratic lawmakers at the state and federal levels renewed their calls for a permanent legislative solution, with then-presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden saying he would work to make DACA permanent if elected. As president, Biden has unveiled a plan to protect dreams, but so far it seems there isn’t enough support in Congress to get it passed.

Many feared that Trump would successfully move to dismantle DACA if reelected. While legal experts generally agreed that he did not have enough time left to do so in the remainder of his term, administration officials continued their efforts to roll back the program even after the Supreme Court ruling, by refusing to accept new applicants and cutting renewal permits from two years to one.

A federal judge reversed those limits in December 2020, ordering the program’s terms to be returned to what they were before the attempted cancellation in 2017.

The Texas case challenged the legality of the program

Meanwhile, there was a more direct challenge to DACA in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

In May 2018—six years after its creation—Texas and six other states filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the program itself.

The case was taken to the US District of Andrew Henin, a candidate for President George W. Bush well known for blocking two other Obama-era immigration initiatives in 2015: one that would expand DACA to an additional 330,000 people and one that sought to offer similar protections for undocumented immigrant parents. (A split 4-4 Supreme Court ruling in 2016 left the lower court’s order in effect.)

Ten states, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, asked Hanen in 2018 a preliminary injunction to force the government to reject DACA renewals and stop accepting new applications.

Texas attorneys said the state was hurt by the drain on resources by DACA recipients, a claim that immigration advocates argued would be difficult to prove because DREAMers contribute to local economies by living, working, paying taxes and raising families in the United States.

Hanin, who ruled at the end of August, said DACA was likely illegal because it overstepped the authority of the executive branch. But he declined to issue a preliminary injunction, saying prosecutors had waited too long to challenge the order in court and comparing the situation to returning “toothpaste to the tube” or unpacking an egg.

“Here, the egg is boiled,” Hanin wrote. “Attempting to put it back into the shell with only a preliminary court record, and potentially at great risk to many, is meaningless and does not serve the best interests of this country.”

About two years later, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling and a series of memoranda and arguments in the Texas case, Nostalgia directed the parties involved to bring their cases before him again.

At a hearing in December 2020, attorneys representing the states argued that DACA was violating the Constitution by circumventing Congress’ power over immigration laws, and that it should have been put through federal regulations rather than a warrant.

They also said the program has increased states’ costs associated with health care, education and law enforcement, with Texas spending an estimated $250,000,000 annually on DACA social services recipients.

The defendants — a group of DACA recipients represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or MALDEF, as well as the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office — argued that Obama had the authority to implement the program, and said the states did not show up. Injury from DACA.

They added that only Texas had attempted to prove harm based on costs associated with the program, so a nationwide injunction would not be appropriate. The defendants argued that the states did not have capacity to challenge DACA, and they pushed for the lawsuit to be dismissed.

Both parties asked Hanin to resolve the case without trial. No judgment was issued at the time.

Changing the landscape in 2021

The court held another hearing in late March, at which point Hanin set a deadline in early April for both parties to provide more information. Much has changed in Washington, D.C. since their last court meeting, MALDEF notes.

For one, there is a new incumbent for the Oval Office. On the day of his inauguration in January, President Biden issued a memorandum directing the Department of Homeland Security to take action “to preserve and fortify DACA.”

Shortly before the March hearing, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mallorcas announced that the agency would issue a “proposed rule-making notice” in line with the president’s memo.

“It’s an important step, but only the passage of legislation can provide full protection and a path to citizenship for dreamers who know the United States as their home,” he said.

The House of Representatives took a step in this direction by passing the American Dream and Promise Act last month. The law, also passed by the House in 2019, would create a process for DREAMers to gain permanent resident status and eventual citizenship, and head to the Senate, where their fate is uncertain.

She already has the support of Biden, who called it a “critical first step in reforming our immigration system.”

“Dreamers and TPS Bearers, of whom the United States is home, are part of our national fabric, and make vital contributions to communities across the country every day,” he said in a statement. “Many have worked tirelessly on the front lines throughout this pandemic to keep our country afloat, nourished and healthy – yet they are forced to live in fear and uncertainty due to their immigration status.”

Immigration rights advocates are urging the Biden administration to protect illegal immigrants by taking executive action in the face of a politically divided Congress. For many, this may mean more than just maintaining DACA.

“DACA protection is the floor, not the ceiling, of what the Biden-Harris administration should be doing,” said Grace Martinez-Rosas, CEO of United We Dream and DACA recipient, last year.

After the Supreme Court ruling last year, several Dreams and immigration advocates spoke to NPR about what they saw as a clear need for a more permanent solution. Theresa Lee, the inspiration behind the original DREAM law first introduced in 2001, said that more certainty for DREAMers could only come in the form of legislation.

“DACA is not the answer for everyone,” she said. “It has always been fragile. It was a compromise. Until there is real immigration reform for all 11 million undocumented people, DACA will never be enough.”

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