Judge Rules Daca Program Must Reopen
The Trump administration has been ordered to fully reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (Daca).
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Supreme Court Judge Rules Daca Program Must Reopen
The Trump administration has been ordered to fully reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (Daca).
District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled on Friday that the Trump administration must accept new applications. This means that the administration must reopen the program to first-time applicants and return the period of protections to two years.
The acting secretary of the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, issued a memo which suspended Daca for new applications in July. He also moved to reduce Daca renewal validity periods from two years to one year.
Daca Program Must be Reinstated
Garaufis said that the Trump government had to post a public notice within three days indicating that new Daca applications will be accepted. The government was also ordered to put together a status report on Daca by 4th January.
The Daca program was introduced by former Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012. It was set up to help some of those with unlawful presence in America who were brought to the country as children, offering them the opportunity to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation.
Most of the children protected by the Daca programme are from Latina American countries. It is estimated that the scheme protected an estimated 700,000 people, who came to be known as “dreamers”.
In 2017, Donald Trump sought to make moves to rescind the program, labelling it as unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court took up the case after lower courts ruled the administration did not adequately explain why the programme would be ended. The Court criticised the White House’s “capricious” explanations.
In June of this year, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling which found the Trump administration’s move to rescind Daca as “unlawful”.
Judge Garaufis ruled that Mr Wolf was not acting within his legal authority when he issued the memo to rescind Daca, and that the scheme should resume.
New Eligibility
Think tank, The Center for American Progress, said more than 300,000 new applicants could now be eligible for Daca.
Karen Tumlin, director of the Justice Action Center, told the AFP news agency that:”This is a really big day for Daca recipients and immigrant young people.”
Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, who takes office on 20th January, has said he plans to revitalise Daca when he takes office.
Biden’s campaign said that he will attempt to give a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the US. Such a move would need to be approved by Congress.
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