Nine GOP-controlled states led by Texas asked a federal judge to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and prevent nearly 600,000 immigrants known as “Dreamers” from renewing their deportation protections and work permits.
The request represents the most pressing legal threat to the Obama-era DACA program, which has continued, although in a limited way, despite the years-old lawsuit challenging its legality and former President Donald Trump’s attempts to dismantle it. …
At the center of the Republican state officials’ request on Tuesday are rules the Biden administration issued to place DACA on firmer legal grounds by transforming the program into a federal regulation. In October, those regulations replaced the Obama administration memo that first created DACA in 2012.
[This is yet another case in which Biden exceeded his statutory and constitutional authority to impose his policies, although it’s nowhere as cut-and-dried as the CDC’s eviction moratoria and the student-loan debt forgiveness program. It will be fought on the same broad lines as those cases, as well as other technical issues such as the Administrative Procedure Act, and that fight might outlast Biden’s presidency. — Ed]
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