DHS Just Delivered a CRUSHING BLOW to Obama’s DREAMers
Source: https://goo.gl/wseQFH
Homeland Security came out swinging on Thursday after a Bush-appointed judge voted to not only keep Obama’s illegal DACA going but to add to it.
Secretary Neilsen said that the U.S. is NOT accepting anymore DACA applications.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Thursday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is not accepting new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, following a federal judge’s Tuesday ruling that the government has not fully justified its decision to end the program.
“We are not taking new applications,” Nielsen told Rep. Sheila Lee Jackson, D-Texas, during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday. “We are complying with all court orders so what that means is if you’re a currently registered DACA recipient, you will not be deported. If you have applied for recertification as a DACA individual, you also will not be deported.”
“If you could just put that in writing since the courts have indicated your ending of the program was incorrect — why you’re not taking new applications,” Jackson Lee asked.
“Just to be clear though, the courts have not said that,” Nielsen explained. “What the courts have said is recently in the last couple days is they’ve asked the department over the next 90 days to come and provide them additional information. Should they find that that information is not sufficient, they reserve the right to take additional action. No court has ordered me to take — allow new DACA recipients.”
The ruling was issued Tuesday evening by federal judge in Washington, D.C. The judge said DHS will have 90 days to firm up its arguments before the case resumes.
Last month, a federal judge in Maryland sided with the Trump administration over a lawsuit challenging the Justice Department’s ability to rescind DACA.
Judge Roger W. Titus, a Bush appointee, ruled Trump acted within his authority in his plan to rescind an executive order former President Barack Obama announced in 2012 as a way to protect illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as minors. Trump ended the order over a period of six months until Congress could legislatively solve the problem.
While it represented a win for the Trump administration, that decision did not affect the status of DACA, which was still in place because other courts have handed down injunctions mandating the program continue while legal challenges to Trump’s decision to end the program continue. The administration originally set a March 5 deadline for the end of DACA.
The lawsuit filed in Maryland is just one of a handful that opponents have submitted following Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ September announcement that the Obama-era program would end.
Two cases — one in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California and another in the Eastern District of New York — have both resulted in decisions that mandated USCIS continue to accept renewal applications from DACA recipients while the issue is decided by the courts.