(CNN) — Nine Republican-led states asked a federal judge in Texas on Tuesday to block the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), a rule that provides protection to nearly 600,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and are known as “dreamers” or “dreamers.”
It is the latest move in an ongoing legal fight over the Barack Obama-era program and represents another threat to the hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries who have been able to live and work in the United States legally.
The Government of President Joe Biden published a rule last year to “preserve and strengthen” the DACA program, largely maintaining the criteria of the program. The regulation was published while litigation over previous memos related to the program was ongoing.
A few months later, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit largely upheld a district court ruling that found DACA illegal, but sent the case back to lower court to decide the legality of the new rule that strengthens the program.
On Tuesday, Republican-led states called the rule “illegal” and called for it to be blocked.
“The final rule, like the latest manifestation of the DACA program, is illegal for substantially the same reasons as the DACA Memorandum. The Court should declare it illegal and unconstitutional, strike it down in its entirety, and permanently bar its implementation (with a prudent transition for existing DACA recipients),” the filing reads.
The case is before Judge Andrew Hanen of the Southern District of Texas, who ruled in July 2021 that DACA was illegal and blocked the government from approving new applications for the program. However, Hanen’s order allowed the program to continue for current affiliates while the case is litigated. That is still the situation today.
Immigrant advocates and administration officials maintain that the responsibility for providing protection to DACA recipients rests with Congress.
Democrats and Republicans have stood in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children, many of whom were under 10 at the time. But the tug-of-war between Democrats and Republicans over “dreamers” has made it difficult to achieve a bipartisan compromise.
