(Headline USA) The Trump administration must accept new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects some young illegal aliens from deportation, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The judge vacated a memo from the acting Homeland Security secretary that had suspended DACA.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, a Clinton appointee, said the government had to post a public notice within three days — including on its website and the websites of all other relevant government agencies — that new DACA applications were being accepted.
The ruling follows one from November where Garaufis said Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was unlawfully in his position.
On Friday, the judge said that invalidated the memo Wolf had issued in July suspending DACA for new applications and reducing how long renewals were valid from two years down to one year.
Wolf had issued his memo after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in June that President Donald Trump failed to follow rule-making procedures when he tried to end the program, even though the program itself is unconstitutional.
Garaufis also ordered the government to put together a status report on the DACA program by Jan. 4.
An email seeking comment was sent to the Department of Homeland Security.
DACA, which was started in 2012 during the Obama administration, allows young illegal aliens who were brought to the country as children to legally work and shields them from deportation.
Those who are approved for it must first go through background checks and regularly renew.
The Trump administration had announced the end of the program in 2017, leading to the legal challenges that wound up in front of the Supreme Court.
In making its ruling, the Supreme Court forbid Trump from scrapping the unconstitutional program, saying that the particular way the administration had gone about shutting it down was improper, but that the president did have the authority to do so.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
