Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
For: EFE
Saturday, October 5
Biden Administration Cancels Appointments of New DACA Applicants Following Judge Order
The government of the president Joe Biden announced today the cancellation of appointments for immigrants who have requested, for the first time, protection of deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program ( DACA ).
The Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) indicated on its website that “it is taking immediate steps to comply with the order of the Federal Court of the Southern District of Texas ”that July 18 stated
For their part, groups that advocate for immigrants indicated that their members had received from USCIS a message by Twitter and by email indicating “the c cancellation of all appointments for taking biometric data from initial DACA applicants. ”
“Anyone who has an appointment to collect biometric data related to an initial DACA application should not attend the appointment” , indicates the message.
This measure is applied for new DACA applicants who dated in the next few weeks or others who were waiting to find out if your initial application had been accepted.
Almost 55, 000 undocumented youth who applied for the first time will be affected, according to USCIS data.
By April 1 there was 55, 550 new DACA applications that still needed to be processed by USCIS. To this number must be added the new applications received in April, May, June and the first 15 July days.
Current DACA recipients will be able to continue their renewal procedures.
The DACA program was created in 2012 by decree of the then president Barack Obama (2009 – 2017), and postponed the deportation of undocumented immigrants who were brought undocumented to the United States when they were minors.
More of 550, 000 people have relied on that program that the former president Donald Trump (2017 – 2021) terminated, also via decree, in September 2017, a measure that was reversed by a decision of the US Supreme Court in June of .
Last week the federal judge Andrew Hanen ordered the government to suspend the granting of new immigration protections and declared that the program violated the Administrative Procedures Act .
Hanen made it clear that his decision does not imply that immigration authorities take “any deportation or criminal action against DACA recipients,” and will allow the renewal of the current migratory protections, which give a temporary residence and work permit for their beneficiaries.
In the judge’s opinion, despite its illegality “ It would not be fair to end of r epente a government program that has created such remarkable dependency ”, and that this has been able to increase over the years, especially when rulings contrary to yours may still arrive in the court of appeals or the Supreme Court.