Federal Judge Issues Strong Order Backing DACA

A third federal judge on Tuesday ruled against the Donald Trump administration’s campaign to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for undocumented immigrants, ordering the administration not only to continue processing applications but also to resume accepting new ones.

US District Judge John Bates of the District of Columbia was withering in his 60-page ruling, calling the administration’s attempts to end the program, known as DACA, “arbitrary,” “capricious,” “virtually unexplained” and “unlawful”, NBC News reported.

Bates stayed the ruling for 90 days to give the Department of Homeland Security time to come up with better arguments for scrapping the program. If it does not, he wrote, he will enter an order reinstating DACA in its entirety. DACA allows children of illegal immigrants to remain in the United States if they were under 16 when their parents brought them into the country and if they arrived by 2007. Those given DACA status must renew it every two years.

The Trump administration had sought to phase out the program starting last month, but two previous federal rulings stalled its efforts. Neither of those rulings—by judges in New York and San Francisco—ordered the government to resume accepting new applications for protection under DACA, making Bates’ ruling the strongest one so far.

“Each day that the agency delays is a day that aliens who might otherwise be eligible for initial grants of DACA benefits are exposed to removal because of an unlawful agency action,” Bates wrote.

In February, the US Supreme Court declined to hear the administration’s appeal of the San Francisco ruling.

In his ruling, Bates said the administration failed to give a sufficient reason for moving to cancel the program last fall, finding that a letter from Attorney General Jeff Sessions offered “scant legal reasoning” and failed to cite any federal law with which DACA was in conflict.

The government did no better, the judge said, by saying that keeping the program going would probably face a legal challenge from states opposed to it.