12 years Previously, when former President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to protect undocumented youth from the threat of deportation, everyone involved saw it as a temporary solution. This will be, as Obama said, a “stopgap measure.” Eventually, everyone thought Congress would come together and pass a bill against the so-called Dreamers, who came to this country as children.
But as I’ve written before, despite the seemingly bipartisan consensus at the time and DACA’s outsized impact on the lives of the 800,000 undocumented young people who have benefited from DACA and built their lives in the United States, the legislature has long envisioned An agreement that would have provided DACA recipients with a path to citizenship was never reached.
Now the prospects for legislation to help Dreamers look bleak. Both presidential candidates are placing greater emphasis on discussing border security issues. And this year, when Democrats supported a bipartisan proposed immigration bill, they largely ignored the plight of undocumented youth as part of the discussion.
With Dreamers off the agenda, DACA has lived well past its intended transition period. That means beneficiaries are stuck in a legal limbo and at the mercy of presidential changes and the whims of the judiciary.
Now the fate of hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals may be the most conservative jurisdiction in the country, with Trump-appointed judges pushing the MAGA agenda to reshape America one radical ruling at a time.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about how my life could have been so different if I had been a DACA recipient and felt permanently secure in my home country, the only country I’ve ever known.” Jose Barrera of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) said in a statement ahead of this week’s hearing: “DACA recipients like me try to live our lives as best we can every day, but if Congress and our elected leaders fail to address this issue, we are bound to feel forgotten year after year. “Our lives cannot be held captive forever.”
On Thursday morning, a panel of three federal judges, none of whom were appointed by Trump, heard oral arguments. Texas vs. USA. This case arose in 2018 as Republican-led states challenged the legality of DACA. Outside the courthouse, DACA recipients and supporters chanted, “Home is here!”
In 2021, Texas District Court Judge Andrew Hanen ruled that Obama exceeded the executive branch’s authority in creating DACA and that the memorandum violated the rulemaking process. In doing so, Hanen blocked the processing of new applications nationwide.
After the Biden administration appealed and issued a final rule to codify DACA into a federal regulation, the Fifth Circuit sided with the state and upheld the district court’s decision. The justices, one Bush judge and two Trump appointees, rejected the government’s argument that DACA was an appropriate exercise of prosecutorial discretion. The case then went back to lower courts, where in 2023 Hanen declared DACA illegal. “While empathizing with the plight of DACA recipients and their families, this court has for some time expressed concerns about the legality of the program,” he wrote.
Twelve years after DACA was signed, and after years of legal wrangling, DACA is in a precarious position. At a hearing Thursday in New Orleans, There were several specific questions before the judges. Whether the Biden administration acted within its authority when it attempted to strengthen and protect DACA in 2022; whether a lower court ruling that halted new applications nationwide was excessive and whether the state of Texas, as a plaintiff, successfully presented evidence that it had been harmed by costs associated with social services provided to DACA recipients.
that Texas vs. USA The case could drag on for weeks or months and eventually end up in the Supreme Court. But what happens to DACA will likely depend on the results of the presidential election in November. While in office, Donald Trump attempted to abolish the program. The Supreme Court ruled that the measure was “arbitrary and capricious.” (It did not address the fundamental question of DACA’s validity.) If Trump takes back the White House, Cecilia Muñoz, who served as director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Obama administration and helped create DACA, told me, “You can expect DACA to be scaled back.” You can. Or disappear completely.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has expressed strong support for DACA throughout her career. As she seeks the Democratic nomination in 2019, Harris has laid out a comprehensive plan to provide a path to citizenship for more than 2 million Dreamers through executive action. The roadmap, which reflects ongoing demands from immigrant rights groups, includes measures to expand DACA eligibility and use so-called “parole” powers to remove barriers that prevent Dreamers with American spouses from obtaining green cards. It is done.
“Dreamers cannot afford to sit back and wait for Congress to get its act together,” Harris said at the time. “These young people are Americans just like me, and they deserve a president who will fight for them from day one.”
It remains to be seen whether she will keep that promise as the 2024 Democratic candidate. Harris’s promises so far have been somewhat moderate. On the program’s anniversary in June, she pledged to “continue to fight to protect Dreamers,” but left responsibility for addressing the path to citizenship to Congress. “We can create a path to citizenship and secure our borders,” she said at the Democratic National Convention in August.
At the hearing, U.S. government attorney Brian Boynton and a counselor for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and New Jersey, which advocates for DACA, disputed Texas’ legal standing to file the lawsuit and argued that the state claimed the harm he claimed to have experienced. The argument that beneficiaries would choose to leave the state or country because of the costs of health care and education, and without the program without legal status, is too indirect and speculative. (One of the justices seemed to agree, pressuring Texas lawyers to present concrete evidence supporting the assumption that DACA recipients are likely to “self-exile.”) They also told the court that the program’s impact on thousands of people We asked you to consider the impact. These are children of U.S. citizens whose parents have DACA and children of businesses in dozens of states that receive DACA benefits.
One of the justices also challenged Texas on whether the state can rely on lower courts to “usurp” federal immigration policy. He cited the Supreme Court’s “sweeping” decision last year that reaffirmed the executive branch’s authority on immigration. Towards the end of his argument, the Texas lawyer acknowledged that he was calling for DACA to be scaled back nationwide. Attorneys representing the Biden administration have petitioned the court to continue preserving DACA for at least 500,000 current beneficiaries.
“This case should never have come to court in the first place. DACA recipients only bring their benefits to the state in which they live,” Nina Perales, an attorney for MALDEF, said at a later press conference. “Since this case began, Texas has been unable to consistently point to DACA recipients who have harmed the state of Texas, and the only state that has attempted to do so is Texas.”
