Nine GOP-controlled states on Tuesday asked a federal judge to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.
Such a move would allow DACA’s nearly 600,000 enrollees, undocumented migrants brought to this country as children known as “Dreamers,” from being able to renew their deportation protections and work permits.
In October, the conservative leaning 5th Circuit court of appeals stayed a lower court’s ruling calling DACA unlawful, but sent the case back to a lower court to consider a new Biden Administration regulation to “preserve and fortify” the DACA program, largely maintaining the criteria for the program.
That October decision had initially stemmed from a 2018 lawsuit by Texas and the other eight GOP states’ attorneys general.
On Tuesday, the GOP-led states called Biden’s DACA regulation “unlawful” and asked Judge Andrew Hanen of the Southern District of Texas for it to be blocked.
Hanen has previously ruled, in July 2021, that DACA was unlawful and blocked the government from approving any new regulations for the program. That order by Hanen, however, allowed the program to continue for current enrollees while the case is litigated.
Immigrant advocates and Biden Administration officials maintain, meanwhile, that the onus is on Congress to provide protections to DACA recipients.
The most recent attempt by Congress to do so—a bipartisan deal to merge a path to citizenship for DACA enrollees with stronger security measures on the U.S.-Mexico border—failed in the lame duck session in December.
