Good news for DACA recipients
On Tuesday, a second federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. These are good news for our community.
Brooklyn Federal District Court Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis ruled that DACA recipients and states are likely to succeed in their challenge against Trump’s decision to terminate the Obama-era program, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.”
Trump last year announced his plan to end DACA, the policy that allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children to stay in the country, effective March 5. That deadline has become central in the congressional debate over immigration, but Democrats and Republicans are nowhere near a breakthrough.
Under the new ruling, combined with last month’s ruling from a California judge, DACA has to remain active for now and accept some renewal requests, but the administration will not have to hold the program open to those who never applied.
Garaufis wrote that “Defendants indisputably can end the DACA program,” referring to the Trump administration. “The question before the court is thus not whether defendants could end the DACA program, but whether they offered legally adequate reasons for doing so. Based on its review of the record before it, the court concludes that defendants have not done so.”
According to Garaufis the decision to end DACA was based in part on the “plainly incorrect factual premise” that the program was illegal.
