In the event that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is defeated in court, the White House prepares executive measures for its defense.
The Joe Biden administration is analyzing possibilities before a judicial defeat of DACA, it could end the program that protects more than 600,000 undocumented youth or Dreamers. Since its creation, DACA has allowed more than 800,000 Dreamers to be protected from deportation, in addition to granting authorization to work legally.
In July 2021, a federal judge in a district of Texas declared the DACA program illegal, which suspended the approval of new applications to the program, however, it is still possible for current recipients to renew every two years.
Subsequently, the case was taken to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where the final decision on the future of DACA is still awaited. For this reason, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) presented the final rule on DACA, which seeks to be an additional protection to the program.
The new rule announced in August 2022 maintains the same DACA election criteria, as well as the possibility for its beneficiaries to access employment permits, and reaffirms that “DACA is not a form of legal status, but that DACA beneficiaries DACA, like other deferred action recipients, is considered "lawfully present" for certain purposes. This new rule will come into force on October 31 of this year.
In this way, the White House is now working on an order in which the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) stops prioritizing the deportation of DACA beneficiaries, and also refrains from deporting them if they are not considered threats to public safety.
However, the pending account of the administration is to ensure that DACA beneficiaries do not lose their work permits. Therefore, the best option to defend and improve DACA continues to be legislation in Congress, or bipartisan immigration reform.
