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Nine Republican-ruled states on Tuesday asked the federal judge in Texas Andrew Hanen close the program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in full for two years, a measure that would prevent nearly 600,000 undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” renew their protections against deportation and their work permits.
The request from the Texas-led coalition of states represents the most pressing legal threat facing the Obama-era DACA program, which has continued to this day, albeit in a limited way, despite years of lawsuit challenging its legality and attempts by former President Donald Trump to dismantle it.
For more than a decade, DACA has allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status who were brought to the United States as children work and live in the country without fear of deportation. But the program does not grant them permanent residency, a status that only Congress can grant. As of September 2022, a total of 589,660 young adults were enrolled in DACA, federal statistics show.
At the center of the request from Republican state officials filed Tuesday are rules the Biden administration issued to put DACA on firmer legal footing by making the program a federal regulation.
In October, those regulations superseded the Obama administration memo that first created DACA in 2012.
At the request of the same group of states, District Court Judge Andrew Hanen declared the 2012 DACA memorandum illegal in the summer of 2021.
Hanen’s ruling, which was upheld in an opinion by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last year, has prevented the government from accepting new DACA applications. But it has also allowed current DACA recipients to continue to renew their enrollment in the program.
However, states questioning the legality of DACA asked Hanen on Tuesday ruling that regulations issued last year are also illegal and that prevent the government from approving renewal applications for up to two years after a decision is made.
“The final rule, as the latest manifestation of the DACA program, is illegal for substantially the same reasons as the DACA Memorandum,” the states said in their filing. “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).”
DACA gives some 600,000 recipients the chance to live and work legally in the United States, but it does not guarantee a path to citizenship.
Nevertheless, It is not known if Hanen will agree to block DACA renewals in the future., as the federal judge previously expressed concern about disrupting the lives of immigrants enrolled in the program. Hanen’s ruling is expected to be issued after the April 6 deadline for the parties in the case to present their pleadings.
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