2023-06-01 14:57:06
HOUSTON, Texas — A revised version of a federal policy that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the United States as children will be discussed Thursday before a federal judge who previously ruled the program illegal.
Lawyers representing the nine states that have sued to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, lawyers for the US Department of Justice and DACA recipients were scheduled to appear in a hearing before the judge in USA District Andrew Hanen.
In 2021, Hanen declared DACA illegal and ruled that the program had not been subject to the public notice and comment periods required by the federal Administrative Procedures Act. Hanen also said that states seeking to stop it had the right to sue because they had been harmed by the program.
States claimed they incur hundreds of millions of dollars in health care, education and other costs when immigrants are allowed to stay in the country illegally. The states that sued are Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas and Mississippi.
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans upheld Hanen’s ruling in 2022, but sent the case back to Hanen to review the changes made to the program by the Biden government.
The new version of DACA went into effect in October and was subject to public comment as part of a formal rulemaking process.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin has worked for more than 20 years to achieve Dreamer recognition, but now the outlook is very uncertain.
In court filings, Texas and the other states argued that the updated program is essentially the same as the 2012 memo that first created it and remains “illegal and unconstitutional.” The states also argued that the White House exceeded its authority by granting immigration benefits that Congress must decide.
The US Department of Justice argued in court documents that the states failed to show any direct harm due to DACA and that Congress has given the Department of Homeland Security the “authority and duty to establish immigration enforcement policies.” .
“DACA is legal. DACA is consistent with the many policies of the US government in the past under different presidents,” said Nina Perales, of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who will speak before Hanen on behalf of DACA recipients.
President Joe Biden assured that he is pressing Congress to grant greater protections to Dreamers.
Hanen has left the Obama-era program intact for those who already benefit from it. But he ruled that there can be no new applicants while the appeals are pending.
There were 580,310 people registered for DACA at the end of December, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Hanen is not expected to rule immediately after Thursday’s court hearing. But any decision he makes is expected to end up before the US Supreme Court for a third time.
In 2016, the Supreme Court reached a 4-4 impasse over an expanded DACA and a version of the program for parents of DACA recipients. In 2020, the high court ruled 5-4 that the Trump administration improperly ended DACA, allowing it to stand.
President Joe Biden and advocacy groups have called on Congress to pass permanent protections for “dreamers,” which is what people protected by DACA are commonly called. Congress has repeatedly failed to pass proposals called the DREAM Act to protect DACA recipients.
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