Judge orders restart to DACA, includes new applications, indirect pathway to citizenship

A federal judge is forcing the Trump administration’s hand on DACA, ruling late last week that the deportation amnesty for “Dreamers” must be restarted in full, the way it ran back before President Trump tried to phase it out in 2017.

That means accepting brand new applicants and allowing DACA recipients to apply for Advance Parole, a program that offers an indirect pathway to citizenship for the immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children.

The administration had been reluctant to go down those roads even after the Supreme Court halted Mr. Trump’s phaseout, ruling last month that he cut too many corners.

Now, U.S. District Judge Paul W. Grimm, sitting in Maryland, has given them no choice, issuing a ruling order to restores all parts of the program.

“The rescission of the DACA policy is vacated, and the policy is restored to its pre-September 5, 2017 status,” Judge Grimm said in his Friday directive. “Defendants and their agents, servants, employees, attorneys, and all persons in active concert or participation with any of them, are enjoined from implementing or enforcing the DACA rescission and from taking any other action to rescind DACA that is not in compliance with applicable law.”

Last month’s Supreme Court ruling had maintained the deportation amnesty at the heart of DACA for more than 640,000 Dreamers already enrolled, but the administration had not approved any new applications.

Activists and Democrats on Capitol Hill had demanded a full restart, and on Friday they praised the judge for ordering it.

“I thought President Trump was the ’law and order’ president? And yet he’s in direct defiance of our courts,” said Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who’s Dreamers’ leading advocate on Capitol Hill.

It’s unclear what the administration will do next.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services declined to comment substantively on the ruling.

CASA, the Maryland-based immigrant-rights group that was the plaintiff in the case, said the new order means the administration will have to restart the indirect pathway to citizenship that the Obama administration allowed for DACA recipients, known as Advance Parole.

DACA recipients who get permission to leave the country and return under advance parole can have their previous illegal status cleared as a bar to getting a green card, which is the key step on the path to citizenship.

“Today’s order from Judge Grimm mandates that the government follow the law and immediately reopen the full DACA program, including by accepting and timely processing initial applications and allowing DACA recipients to apply for Advance Parole,” CASA said in a statement.

DACA grants a two-year stay of deportation and work permits for the immigrants who arrived in 2007 or before, and who are under an age limit. They also have to have completed high school or be pursuing an equivalent degree, and to have kept a somewhat clean criminal rap sheet.

During the three-year legal battle over Mr. Trump’s phaseout, those in the program could renew their applications, but no new applicants were accepted.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling last month, activist groups rushed to help file new applications from Dreamers who would have qualified but had been too young to apply before the phaseout began.

The groups said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has yet to approve any of them.

Even after the court decision, USCIS retains discretion to reject applications, but its rejection rate was less than 10% before the phaseout.

President Trump has hinted he will attempt another phaseout of DACA, this time following all the procedures the courts said he skipped last time. But he has also sent other signals, including a confusing claim that he will sign something granting DACA recipients a direct pathway to citizenship.

Over the eight-year life of DACA, more than 800,000 people have been approved, and as of March 643,560 were still active. Others either failed to renew or, in many cases, gained a more permanent legal status — including some that used the Advance Parole option to gain a green card.