Biden Admin. Defends DACA in Federal Appeals Court

On Wednesday, the Biden administration defended the Obama-era immigration program for “Dreamers” known as DACA or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in an Appeals Court case that could potentially remove protections from hundreds of thousands of DACA aliens.

“The Justice Department’s Brian M. Boynton told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that a 2012 memo that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, ‘is lawful in its entirety and should be upheld,'” reports Roll Call.

The court is reviewing a decision made last year by Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas that ended the program. Judge Hanen noted that the Department of Justice lacked the legal authority to create such an amnesty program.

The lawsuit was initially brought by the state of Texas and eight other Republican lead states.

Roll Call describes the program:

DACA since 2012 has provided deportation protections and work permits to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. The program currently shields more than 600,000 young people from deportation and allows them to work or study in the country, according to government data.

Boynton, representing the Biden admin., argued to the court that the states did not have the legal authority to sue the administration, adding that the costs and damages they outlined were ‘merely speculative,’ reports Roll Call.

The solicitor general for Texas, Judd E. Stone II, argued on behalf of the states suing the Biden admin. opposed that notion. He claimed that his state estimated the program’s total cost to be in the hundreds of millions, which Stone stated is “plainly are constitutionally sufficient” to allow the states to challenge the program.

Roll Call adds:

The Biden administration is working to redo the DACA program by issuing the policy through formal rule-making, rather than via agency memo as the Obama administration did. On Tuesday, the administration sent a finalized version of this rule to the White House budget office for review.

You can read the full story at Roll Call.