Federal judge orders Biden to BLOCK new DACA applications after ruling Obama illegally created program shielding 650,000 migrant children from deportation
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sided with a group of states suing to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program
A U.S. federal judge in Texas on Friday blocked new applications to a program that protects immigrants who were brought to the United States as children from deportation.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sided with a group of states suing to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, arguing it was illegally created by former President Barack Obama in 2012.
Hanen found the program violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it was created but said that since there were so many people currently enrolled in the program - nearly 650,000 - his ruling would be temporarily stayed for their cases until further court rulings in the case.
'To be clear,' the judge said, the order does not require the government to take 'any immigration, deportation or criminal action against any DACA recipient.'
President Joe Biden, who was vice president when Obama created the program, has said he wants to create a permanent pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, known as 'Dreamers.'
A U.S. federal judge in Texas on Friday blocked new applications to a program that protects immigrants who were brought to the United States as children from deportation. DACA protesters march in Washington DC on June 24, 2021
Biden issued a memorandum on his first day in office directing the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to take 'all actions he deems appropriate' to 'preserve and fortify' the program, which former President Donald Trump, a Republican, tried to end.
The U.S. Supreme Court last year blocked a bid by Trump to end DACA, saying that his administration had done so in an 'arbitrary and capricious' manner.
The decision comes on the day the new Customs and Border Protection figures revealed that 188,829 migrants were stopped at the southwest border in June, the sixth monthly increase since the start of 2021.
It was also another increase on the 180,641 who were apprehended in May.
These statistics just account for the apprehensions, and doesn't include the migrants who cross undetected.
According to reports that is up to 1,500 people every day.
It is still not immediately clear where exactly these asylum seekers and illegal crossers are being sent after they are transferred out of federal immigration agencies' custody.
The June numbers mean that almost 1.2 million migrants could have already entered the US since the beginning of the year and more than 2.3 million people could cross into the US by the end of 2021, if the pace of apprehensions and those who avoid detection remain the same.
There also appears to be no available statistics on how many immigrants who are encountered and taken into custody are sent back to Mexico, or their origin countries, compared to those who are put in an alternatives to detention programs or otherwise released into the U.S.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sided with a group of states suing to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, arguing it was illegally created by former President Barack Obama in 2012