A California federal judge has decided the Trump administration must reinstate former President Barack Obama’s DACA program, which granted amnesty to some illegal immigrants.
San Francisco-based U.S. District Court judge William Alsup said the Trump administration must restart the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The ruling said that the U.S. could exclude any new enrollments, however.
It’s unclear when DACA recipients can resume applying for renewals of work permits.
“They can’t go back and renew today,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “We expect there to be a lot of confusion in communities about what that means.”
In response, the White House said the decision was “outrageous.”
“An issue of this magnitude must go through the normal legislative process,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “President Trump is committed to the rule of law, and will work with members of both parties to reach a permanent solution that corrects the unconstitutional actions taken by the last administration.”
Trump had said he would end DACA after six months to give Congress the chance to pass legislation that would protect the “Dreamers,” or DACA program members.
But this week, he also said that he would sign a bill to grant amnesty to the DACA program recipients if Republicans and Democrats could agree on the legislation.
In 2012, Obama had implemented the program to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants who were brought into the U.S. as children. Critics, however, said Obama did not have the constitutional authority to grant that amnesty without an act of Congress.
There are some 700,000 recipients in the DACA program, according to The Washington Post.
Photo courtesy: ©Thinkstock/mofles
Publication date: January 10, 2018
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