Trump Administration Refuses To Accept New DACA Applicants Despite Court Rulings
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Today the Trump administration continued its push to roll back DACA, the program that protects young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. Recently, a number of courts had given those immigrants hope. Last month the Supreme Court blocked the administration's effort to end the program. Then a court in Maryland told the administration to start accepting new DACA applicants. Well, now the administration is refusing to do that. NPR's Joel Rose covers immigration and has been following this story. He joins us now. Hey, Joel.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: So what happened today exactly?
ROSE: Well, the Trump administration is officially acknowledging what we reported several weeks ago. It is rejecting new DACA applicants. This is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. It protects immigrants who are brought to the country illegally as children from deportation and also allows them to work here legally. The administration also went even further today and said it would renew DACA protections for immigrants already in the program, about 640,000 of them at last count, but for just one year. Before, those renewals lasted for two years.
CHANG: OK, but wait. Haven't courts repeatedly sided with DACA and told the administration to restart the program?
ROSE: Yes. There have been lots of court rulings on this. And, of course, the case has gone all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court did not rule on the legality of DACA itself. Instead, last month the Supreme Court ruled that the administration went about ending the program in the wrong way. And many immigration lawyers figured that meant a return to the way that DACA worked before the administration tried to kill it.
But that is not what has happened. We found several cases where immigrants tried to sign up for DACA for the first time and got basically a form letter saying, sorry, but the program is not accepting new applicants. And then just two weeks ago a court in Maryland said explicitly that the administration had to go back in time to the way things were in September of 2017, when DACA was in full swing.
CHANG: So given all these court decisions, is what the White House doing legal?
ROSE: Well, reporters asked that question repeatedly on a call with the White House today. And a White House official pointed to a new memo issued today by the acting secretary of Homeland Security. And the administration argues that memo gives them the right to reject new applications while they conduct what they're calling a comprehensive review of DACA. Remember; they tried to end DACA with a memo, saying it was created illegally by the Obama administration back in 2012. But the Supreme Court said that wasn't good enough. And that begged another question about this new memo. And the White House official was asked on the call today, do you expect more litigation over this? - to which he simply said three words - yes, of course.
CHANG: OK, well, is there any word on that? Are immigration advocates planning to sue?
ROSE: For sure. And I should say opponents of DACA, including several Republican state attorneys general, are also suing. They're still in court trying to get DACA declared illegal. And even before today's announcement, one of the immigrant rights groups that won at the Supreme Court had been building a test case to try to fully restore DACA.
So a resolution on all of this is still nowhere in sight and certainly unlikely before the November election. And that's frustrating and infuriating for many of these young immigrants, often called DREAMers. They have been fighting this battle for years. They thought they won at the Supreme Court, and they accused the Trump administration of unlawfully refusing to comply with the courts. A group called United We Dream called this move today, quote, "an attack on undocumented people," unquote, who live under the constant threat of deportation.
CHANG: That is NPR's Joel Rose. Thank you, Joel.
ROSE: You're welcome.
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