Federal Judge Declares Biden’s Attempt To Preserve DACA Illegal

Dating back to the Obama administration, Democrats have been pushing for the permanent adoption of an immigration program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, but it has encountered a number of legal and political roadblocks along the way.

Essentially, DACA proponents want to allow undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. at the age of 16 or younger to receive an expedited pathway to legal status. 

The proposal has even attracted some bipartisan support, but former President Donald Trump moved to end the program during his term in the White House. Subsequently, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the Trump administration did not meet all the requirements necessary to properly halt the program, thus allowing it to remain in effect. 

Legal challenges continued, however, including a 2021 decision by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, who found that former President Barack Obama did not have the authority to grant legal status or prevent deportations against immigrants when he announced the program in 2012. That ruling effectively halted any future applications but did not impact those who had already applied. 

This week, the same judge weighed in on the Biden administration’s version of DACA, asserting that it “suffers from the same legal impediments” as the original. Nevertheless, he did not take any action that would challenge the status of nearly 600,000 recipients of the program’s deferred action.

As Hanen wrote in his decision: “To be clear, neither this order nor the accompanying supplemental injunction requires the [Department of Homeland Security] or the Department of Justice to take any immigration, deportation, or criminal action against any DACA recipient, applicant, or any other individual that would otherwise not be taken.”

Although the ruling did not bring about any fundamental change to the program on its own, DACA critics interpreted it as even more evidence that the protections are unconstitutional.

The judge concluded that only an act of Congress could result in constitutional clarity on the issue, noting that while he is “sympathetic to the predicament” of so-called Dreamers, the “solution for these deficiencies lies with the legislature, not the executive or judicial branches.”