By Matt Stevens
The New York Times
The federal government said on Saturday that it would resume accepting renewal requests for a program that shields from deportation young immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as children.
In a statement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that “until further notice,” the Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, “will be operated on the terms in place before it was rescinded” in September, when President Donald Trump moved to end it.
The decision came after a federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction on Tuesday ordering the Trump administration to resume the DACA program.
The agency said on Saturday that people who were previously granted deferred action under the program could request a renewal if it had expired on or after Sept. 5, 2016.
People who had previously received DACA but whose deferred action had expired before Sept. 5, 2016, cannot renew but can instead file a new request, the agency said. It noted that the same instructions would apply to anyone whose deferred action had been terminated.
But officials also said they were not accepting requests from individuals who had never been granted deferred action under DACA.
Saying the decision to kill it was improper, Judge William
Alsup of U.S. District Court in San Francisco wrote that the administration must “maintain the DACA program on a nationwide basis” as the legal challenge to the president’s decision goes forward.
President Barack Obama created the DACA program in 2012 to give young immigrants the ability to work legally in the United States. In attempting to end it in September, Trump argued that Obama’s actions were unconstitutional and an overreach of executive power.
Since then, a fierce debate has taken hold in Washington as Democrats and Republicans spar about how to provide relief for about 800,000 immigrants who could face deportation if the program ends. Trump met with lawmakers in an hourlong televised meeting Tuesday to begin negotiations.
Critics of the president’s decision to end the policy sued the administration, saying that shutting down the program was arbitrary and done without following the proper legal procedures.
In his ruling, the judge laid out a road map for the government that officials appeared to follow. He said that previous beneficiaries of DACA, known as Dreamers, must be allowed to renew their status in the program, although the government would not be required to accept new applications from immigrants who had not previously submitted one.