July 17 (UPI) — A federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to accept new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program on Friday.
Since President Donald Trump began his efforts to terminate the program in 2017, the U.S. government hasn’t accepted new applications. The administration has allowed existing DACA recipients — undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children — to continue to receive the protections.
Last month, though, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s attempts to terminate DACA was arbitrary and capricious, and unconstitutional.
District Judge Paul Grimm on Friday said the Trump administration must enforce DACA according to its status before the efforts to terminate it.
CASA, the organization that sued to enforce DACA fully, welcomed the ruling.
“This DACA decision reaffirms what we already knew and what SCOTUS already said: the Trump admin’s … heartless attempt to terminate the DACA program was illegal and they must immediately begin accepting new DACA applications,” the organization said on Twitter.
President Barack Obama started the DACA program with an executive order in 2012 in an effort to provide temporary relief from deportation for children brought to the United States by undocumented parents. It also allows them to work and go to school in the United States without risk of being sent to their country of birth.
Trump sought to end the program in favor of allowing Congress to pass its own immigration reform, which failed.
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