A federal appeals court will hear arguments this week over the fate of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in the country who arrived in the United States as minors and were protected from deportation and allowed to work legally.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, has allowed recipients to build their lives and careers in the United States. But the Obama-era initiative was meant to be a short-term solution until Congress overhauled the nation’s outdated immigration system.
The country is still waiting and the system is increasingly dysfunctional, even as international migration becomes more complex and the issue becomes more politicized. With Congress reluctant to act, battles over immigration policy increasingly end up in federal courts.
The current lawsuit against DACA, filed in 2018 by Texas and six other Republican-controlled states, argues that the creation of the program represented an overreach of presidential authority and imposed excessive costs on states.
The Justice Department is defending DACA, joined by a host of other parties, including the state of New Jersey and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft also support efforts to preserve DACA, emphasizing that the program’s recipients benefit the economy and arguing that presidents have the power to delay enforcement of immigration laws .
Arguments in the case are scheduled to be heard Thursday in New Orleans by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court, which covers Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, is known as one of the most aggressive conservatives in the country. He upheld a partial ban on the abortion drug mifepristone, a decision that the Supreme Court overturned.
The judges hearing the DACA challenge will consider three questions: whether the requesting states have demonstrated that the program actually costs the state money; whether the Biden administration acted within its authority in 2022 when it sought to “preserve and strengthen” DACA with a formal rule; and whether the lower court, which blocked new applications for the program nationwide, should have limited its ruling to the seven states that sued.
States will argue that they bore the financial and other costs of a program they view as illegal.
The states said in a brief filed this year that “because presidents cannot unilaterally override duly enacted laws, DACA remains illegal.”
Those who defend the program will argue that the president had the authority to create the program and that the executive branch can exercise discretion on immigration matters.
Under the program, the government granted reprieve from deportation and work permits to immigrants who were younger than 31, had lived in the country since childhood, and met other requirements. Beneficiaries must renew their status every two years.
Since DACA took effect 12 years ago, some 800,000 people have registered and a large majority have renewed their registration. After the cessation of new applications by decision of the judge in 2021, the number of registrants fell sharply. There are currently about 500,000. Experts attribute the decline in renewals to the program’s uncertain future.
President Barack Obama launched the program in 2012 after legislation known as the Dream Act, which would have given legal status to young immigrants, stalled in Congress.
He described it as a stopgap measure to protect some of the country’s most vulnerable immigrants — those who were brought to the United States as children without any choices and grew up as Americans.
The initiative proved extremely popular, and a long-term solution never materialized in a divided Congress, even though the youth had support from lawmakers and Americans across the political spectrum.
Then, in 2017, the Trump administration moved to eliminate DACA, on the basis that it fell outside the constitutional powers of the executive branch. Since then, the program has been suspended, reinstated and partially canceled by court decisions.
In June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to end the program, calling the decision “arbitrary and capricious.” But the court did not rule on the fundamental question of whether the program itself was legal.
A federal judge in Texas, Andrew S. Hanen, ruled in 2021 that DACA was illegal, saying Obama, in creating DACA, had exceeded his authority and violated procedures for new regulations. The judge allowed current recipients to renew their aid every two years, but barred the government from processing new applications.
The Biden administration has implemented a formal rule for the program, hoping to address some of Hanen’s concerns. But, in September 2023, he ruled that DACA was still illegal, triggering the appeal that the three-judge panel will consider this week in New Orleans.
None of the judges who will hear the appeal this week are among Donald Trump’s six nominees for the 5th Circuit. But one of them, Judge Jerry E. Smith, wrote the majority opinion in a 5th Circuit appeal that blocked a similar Obama-era program for parents of illegal immigrants in the country. The 5th Circuit has already reduced DACA in the past, upholding a lower court ruling in another case that barred the Department of Homeland Security from accepting new DACA applications.
The legal battle over DACA comes as politics around immigration are much more polarized than when the program began. Trump has made threats of mass deportations a central plank of his presidential campaign. Even as Democrats denounce Trump’s incendiary lies against immigrants, the party has shifted to the right on policy, with President Joe Biden tightening asylum rules and allowing a different two-year program to expire. some immigrants.
In the 5th Circuit’s case, it could take weeks or months before the court issues a decision. Even if the appeals court rules the program is illegal, it is unlikely to end immediately. Any decision would have to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
DACA recipients were typically teenagers when they first obtained status.
“The reality is these people are adults now who have careers,” said Bruna Bouhid-Sollod, senior policy director at United We Dream, an immigrant rights group founded by young immigrants. “They have families. They have responsibilities.
Among them are lawyers, doctors and teachers. Nearly half of them are married and have a child born in the United States.
“Ending DACA doesn’t just affect DACA recipients,” Bouhid-Sollod said. “That would have a ripple effect that would be catastrophic.”
As of 2022, approximately 100,000 students graduate from high school each year without being enrolled in DACA. They are not safe from deportation, and while they can attend college and earn a degree, they cannot legally work in the United States.
The number of illegal students nationwide who enrolled on University of California and California State University campuses decreased by 50% between the 2016-17 and 2022-23 academic years, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California. Project at UCLA and UC Davis Law School.
The authors attributed the decline to uncertainty about the future of DACA.
Originally published:
