The federal judge who had ruled in April that the Trump administration’s reason for rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program ruled again Friday that the Department of Homeland Security’s reason for dissolving the Obama-era operation will not stand up in court and ordered the White House to continue it.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge John Bates said in two civil suits brought by the Princeton University trustees and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that three months after being given a chance to respond to his initial dismissal, the Justice Department failed to make a case for why President Trump allowed DACA to expire.
DACA allows people illegally residing in the U.S. as a result of being brought to the country as minors to apply for work permits and avoid deportation.
“For the reasons explained below, the government’s motion will be denied. Although the Nielsen Memo purports to offer further explanation for DHS’s decision to rescind DACA, it fails to elaborate meaningfully on the agency’s primary rationale for its decision: the judgment that the policy was unlawful and unconstitutional,” Bates wrote in his response. “And while the memo offers several additional ‘policy’ grounds for DACA’s rescission, most of these simply repackage legal arguments previously made, and hence are ‘insufficiently independent from the agency’s evaluation of DACA’s legality’ to preclude judicial review or to support the agency’s decision.”
“DHS also cannot rely on new reasons that it now articulates for the first time,” Bates added. “The government’s attempt to thread this needle fails. The motion to revise the Court’s April 2018 order will therefore be denied, and the Court’s vacatur of DACA’s rescission will stand.”
DOJ will now have 20 days to decide whether to appeal the court’s decision.
Other federal judges have also ruled in the case, some in favor of the Trump administration.
A federal judge in Maryland in March sided with federal lawyers over a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s ability to rescind the DACA program.
Judge Roger W. Titus, a President George W. Bush appointee, ruled Trump acted within his authority in his plan to rescind an executive order former President Barack Obama announced in 2012 as a way to protect illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as minors. Trump in September ended the order over a period of six months until Congress could legislatively solve the problem.
“This decision took control of a pell-mell situation and provided Congress — the branch of government charged with determining immigration policy — an opportunity to remedy it. Given the reasonable belief that DACA was unlawful, the decision to wind down DACA in an orderly manner was rational,” Titus wrote.
“As disheartening or inappropriate as the president’s occasionally disparaging remarks may be, they are not relevant to the larger issues governing the DACA rescission. The DACA Rescission Memo is clear as to its purpose and reasoning, and its decision is rationally supported by the administrative record,” the judge added. Titus also praised the Trump administration’s strategy to wind the program down over the course of half a year instead of doing so in a shorter period.
Although it represents a major win for the Trump administration, Titus’ decision does not affect the current status of DACA. As of August, the program is still in place because other courts have handed down injunctions mandating the program continue while legal challenges to Trump’s decision to end the program continue. The administration originally set a March 5 deadline for the end of DACA.
Current recipients are able to apply for renewal while the cases are pending, but no new illegal immigrants who would otherwise be covered by the program can apply.
The lawsuit filed in Maryland is just one of a handful that opponents have submitted following Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ September announcement that the Obama-era program would conclude in six months.
Two cases — one in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California and another in the Eastern District of New York — have both received preliminary injunctions, which mandated the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency continue to accept renewal applications from 689,000 DACA recipients while the issue is decided by the courts.
Trump has taken issue with previous unrelated court decisions on immigration, including one on the administration’s travel bans, alleging that judges ruled against him for political reasons.
The Maryland judge’s decision may give the Department of Justice more support in its appeals that the administration was justified in ending DACA.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
