The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled on Saturday that Acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf lacked the authority to suspend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA).

The Supreme Court decided in June that the Trump administration could not end the DACA program that provided temporary relief to undocumented immigrants, because the “rescission was arbitrary and capricious.” Following the SCOTUS decision, a District Court in Maryland ordered the administration to begin accepting new DACA applicants. However, Wolf issued a memo on July 28th that ordered DHS officials to “reject all pending and future initial requests for DACA, to reject all pending and future applications for advance parole absent exceptional circumstances, and to shorten DACA renewals consistent with the parameters established in this memorandum” from two years to one.

U.S. District Court judge Nicholas Judge Garaufis said in his opinion that when DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned in 2019, the order of succession was straightforward; from the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security to the Under Secretary for Management, Administrator of FEMA, and then the Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure. Under this succession plan, Christopher Krebs should have assumed the role as DHS Acting Secretary instead of Kevin McAleenan, who was Commissioner of US Customs and Border Patrol at the time. Since McAleenan lacked the statutory authority to assume the position as Secretary of DHS, Chad Wolf assuming the position of Acting Secretary after him was also “not an authorized agency action.”

Judge Garaufis said that since Wolf lacked the authority to serve as Acting Secretary, his July 28 memorandum that effectively ended the DACA program is invalid, like all other actions he undertook in the position.