Republican states ask court to shut down DACA program for immigrant dreamers

Washington. On Tuesday, nine Republican-controlled states appealed to a federal judge in Texas. to Completely close the Deferred Action for Children’s Arrivals (DACA) program within two years, preventing the nearly 600,000 immigrants known as the “Dreamers” from renewing their deportation protection and work permits.

The Texas-led coalition request represents the most serious legal threat facing the Obama-era DACA program, which continues to this day, albeit on a limited scale, despite a years-long lawsuit challenging its legitimacy and former President Donald Trump. Trump’s attempts to dismantle it.

For more than a decade, DACA has allowed hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who were brought to the US as children to work and live in the country without fear of deportation. But the program does not grant them permanent residence, a status that only Congress can grant. As of September 2022, DACA has 589,660 youth enrollments. federal statistics Show.

At the center of a request by Republican government officials Tuesday is rules issued by the Biden administration to put DACA on firmer legal footing, turning the program into a federal regulation. In October, those rules replaced the Obama administration memo that first created DACA in 2012.

In the summer of 2021, at the request of the same group of states, U.S. District Court Andrew Hanen declared the 2012 DACA memo illegal. DACA applications. But it also allowed current DACA recipients to continue to renew their enrollment in the program.

However, states challenging the legality of DACA asked Hanen on Tuesday to admit that the rules issued last year are also illegal and prohibit the government from approving renewal applications two years after the decision.

“The final rule – as the latest incarnation of the DACA program – is essentially illegal for the same reasons as the DACA MoU,” the states said in a statement. “The court must declare it illegal and unconstitutional, strike it down entirely, and permanently ban its execution (with a reasonable transition for existing DACA recipients).”

While the Biden administration’s rules address one of the legal claims against DACA — that it should have been created through a provision open to public comment — they probably won’t change Hanen’s view that the policy itself violates U.S. law, since the rules are identical to the rules. He declared the 2012 memorandum illegal.

However, it is unclear if Hanen will agree to block future DACA renewals, as he has previously raised concerns about the disruption to the lives of immigrants participating in the program. Hahnen’s decision is expected to be issued after April 6, when the parties in the case are due to file paperwork.

“While we cannot predict what the decision will look like if Judge Hanen decides that DACA is illegal, this decision is likely to be challenged in the highest court,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation in the Mexican American Legal Service. The Defense and Education Foundation, which works with the Biden and New Jersey administrations to protect the legitimacy of the program.

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A decision that closes DACA or declares the program illegal is likely to be appealed by the Biden administration in the 5th Circuit, and the case could eventually go to the Supreme Court.

The states that joined Texas’ bid to end DACA were Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas, and Mississippi. They argued that DACA was an illegal excess of executive power and that only Congress had the authority to grant federal benefits to illegal immigrants.

The prospect of shutting down DACA could restart discussions in Congress about legalizing those enrolled in the program, a proposal that has received broad bipartisan support among Americans. But congressional efforts to pass such a proposal have repeatedly failed since 2001 due to broader partisan divisions over US immigration policy.

“Unfortunately, our Congress has been polarized and has been unable to pass any major immigration reform legislation — and I think that is unlikely to happen in 2023,” said Steve Yale-Lauer, a professor at Cornell University who studies the US immigration system. .

Yale-Lauer said the only way he sees the new Congress offering permanent legal status to DACA beneficiaries is as part of a broader deal that includes measures restricting safe haven along the U.S.-Mexico border to address the concerns of Republican lawmakers who have narrow majority in the vote. House.

Camila de Pierola, 25, who has lived in the US since her family left Peru when she was a year old, said being fired by DACA would ruin her dreams of becoming a doctor. The Bay Area resident said she plans to attend medical school this fall after earning her master’s degree from UC Berkeley in May.

“How can I financially support myself? That would be one big question mark. I’m sure that would also cause a lot of outrage,” said de Pierola, who has studied at DACA all her adult life.

De Pierola noted that while some medical schools take of applicants enrolled in DACA, many do not accept students who do not have legal immigration status. Residence programs also require students to show that they are legally eligible to work in the US.

Those who were enrolled in DACA had to pass a background check and meet several eligibility requirements, including proving that they arrived in the US at the age of 16 and before June 2007, attended a US school or served in the military, and did not have any serious criminal record.

According to the government, two-thirds of the immigrants registered with DACA are between the ages of 21 and 30, and 81% of them were born in Mexico. The other top countries of origin of DACA beneficiaries are El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru and South Korea.

In the fall of 2017, the Trump administration made the decision to end DACA, arguing that the policy was illegal. But it has been upheld by federal courts, including the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2020 that the Trump administration had not properly canceled the program.

However, over the past five years, DACA has for the most part been closed to new applicants. It was open to new members for several months after a court decision in late 2020, but Hanen, a judge in Texas, barred approval of the first DACA requests in July 2021, and the program has since been shut down.

Saul Rascon Salazar, 21, a senior lecturer at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, managed to apply for DACA shortly before the Trump administration tried to withdraw him. He grew up in Phoenix after leaving Mexico in 2006 when he was 5 years old. Although they have similar stories, one of Rascon Salazar’s younger brothers is not enrolled in DACA because he was closed to new applicants before he could meet the age requirements.

“It was exponentially harder for him,” Rascon Salazar said, noting that his brother struggled to get financial aid for college.

Rascon Salazar said the DACA allowed him to work and receive financial assistance to pay for his college education. His participation in the program also motivated him to speak on behalf of other immigrants. According to him, a court decision to close DACA “would be devastating.”

“That would be the big middle finger in everything I did,” Rascon Salazar added.

Leon Rodriguez, who led DACA as director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services during former President Barack Obama’s second term, said any unilateral action the Biden administration could take in response to the decision to end the program would be limited.

The administration could adopt a new policy directing immigration agents to refrain from deporting DACA beneficiaries without granting them work permits, but Rodriguez said that would be “nearly useless” as that population is not a priority for deportation anyway, at least , under President Biden. .

“DACA was always meant to be a temporary solution,” Rodriguez said, “so in a way it took the pressure off to find a real solution that is the path to citizenship.”

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