NewsThe US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] on Tuesday vacated [ruling, PDF] the Trump administration’s efforts to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) [official materials] program, which protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children from deportation and provides them with renewable work permits.
Judge John D. Bates found that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) [official website] decision to rescind DACA protections “was arbitrary and capricious because the Department failed
adequately to explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful,” and thus was a violation of DHS’s rule-making authority under the
 [text].</p><blockquote><p>Here, the Department’s decision to rescind DACA was predicated primarily on its legal judgment that the program was unlawful. That legal judgment was virtually unexplained, however, and so it cannot support the agency’s decision. And although the government suggests that DACA’s rescission was also predicated on the Department’s assessment of litigation risk, this consideration is insufficiently distinct from the agency’s legal judgment to alter the reviewability analysis. It was also arbitrary and capricious in its own right, and thus likewise cannot support the agency’s action. For these reasons, DACA’s rescission was unlawful and must be set aside.</p></blockquote><p>Bates stayed his ruling for 90 days to give DHS the opportunity to provide “a fuller explanation for the determination that the program lacks statutory and constitutional authority.” If DHS fails to provide adequate proof within this time frame, DACA will be restored as it was prior to the administration’s decision to <a
href=/paperchase/2017/09/trump-administration-to-eliminate-daca-program.php>end the program</a> [JURIST report].</p><p>If the order were to go into effect, DHS would be required to “accept and process new as well as renewal DACA applications,” and thus the ruling is broader than earlier decisions halting the program issued by the <a
href=/paperchase/2018/01/federal-judge-temporaily-blocks-discontinuation-of-daca-program.php>Northern District of California</a> and the <a
href=/paperchase/2018/02/second-federal-judge-blocks-daca-repeal.php>Eastern District of New York</a> [JURIST reports]. Notably, the DC court’s ruling conflicts with a decision <a
href=/paperchase/2018/03/federal-judge-rules-trump-had-right-to-end-daca.php>rejecting a challenge</a> [JURIST report] to DACA’s termination issued last month by a federal court in Maryland.</p></div></div></article></div></section><aside
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