The Department of Homeland Security fully relaunched Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals this week, the Obama-era program that allows illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to apply for protection from deportation.
DHS announced late Monday it would immediately begin accepting applications for DACA, as it is known, in response to a federal judge’s ruling last week, which concluded the Trump administration’s attempts to walk back the program earlier this year were invalid. Judge Nicholas George Garaufis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York last Friday ordered it to be fully reinstated in three days.
DHS agency U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will accept new applications for the permits, as well as renewal applications. DACA recipients receive a reprieve from deportation and work documents that allow them to be employed in the U.S. on a two-year basis that can be renewed as long as they maintain a clean criminal record. The program was created by former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson following Congress’s inaction on comprehensive immigration reform legislation that included a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
Garaufis ruled in November that Wolf was unlawfully appointed to his post atop DHS; therefore, his attempt over the summer to only allow renewal applications for one-year terms instead of two-year terms was invalid.
Trump’s former Attorney General Jeff Sessions attempted to rescind the program entirely early on in the administration. The Trump administration first announced in September 2017 that it would shutter DACA and gave Congress six months to come up and pass a legislative solution. The move was challenged and eventually landed before the Supreme Court, which in June blocked the Trump administration from ending it on the basis that its plan to do so was not adequate.
DHS said Monday it might seek relief from Graufis’s order. More than 760,000 people have received DACA since its inception.
