Trump administration to reject new DACA applications
This new arrangement is likely to be challenged in court as it violates a federal court’s order preventing the administration from rejecting new applications and denying advance parole.
The Trump administration on Tuesday announced it will continue to reject new applications from undocumented immigrants brought as children as it reviews an Obama-era regulation that protects them from deportation.
During the review of the programme, Deferred Action on Childhood Arrival (DACA), those already signed up will be granted shortened renewal from 2 year to 1 and all applications for “advance parole”, which allows these immigrants to travel abroad, will be denied barring “exceptional circumstances”.
This new arrangement is likely to be challenged in court as it violates a federal court’s order preventing the administration from rejecting new applications and denying advance parole.
There are an estimated 644,000 undocumented immigrants protected from deportation under this regulation and they are also called DREAMERs, including at least 2,500 from India.
“The administration is now undertaking a comprehensive review of the DACA program and the justifications that have been offered for winding DACA down, including its illegality and the negative effect the program has on what I’d call ‘immigration behavior’,” a senior Trump administration official told reporters.
The Trump administration has had this programme in its crosshairs from Year 1, and rescinded it in September 2017, arguing, chiefly, for congress to legislate a resolution, to replace the Obama-era regulations instituted through an executive order. “As the Department continues looking at the policy and considers future action, the fact remains that Congress should act on this matter,” said Chad F. Wolf., acting secretary of the department of homeland security on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court in June blocked the administration’s September order saying it had not provided adequate legal justification for rescinding the Obama-era regulation.
But the Trump administration argued the court had not upheld the Obama regulation as lawful. “The issue that the Court reached in its decision was only that the administration had insufficiently justified its wind-down of the DACA program,” the official said. “The court agreed that the administration can, in fact, pursue a wind-down of the DACA program.”