Politico Pro
By Ted Hesson
February 28, 2018
Roughly 11,000 young, undocumented immigrants applied to renew their enrollment in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program during the three weeks that followed a federal judge’s order that DACA renewals resume, according to statistics released Wednesday by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The figures cover the period from Jan. 10, one day after Judge William Alsup of California’s Northern District ordered the renewal, to Jan. 31.
President Donald Trump announced in September that he would terminate DACA, a controversial move that the administration attributed to a threat from a group of conservative state attorneys general to challenge DACA’s legality in court. Initiated under President Barack Obama, DACA provides a two-year grant of deportation relief and access to work permits to certain undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
Under Trump’s phaseout, federal immigration officials allowed people with DACA grants expiring by March 5 to apply for a renewal, with applications due Oct. 5. After that date, the Department of Homeland Security ended DACA renewals — until January, when it was ordered by the district court to resume them.
The Trump administration initially expected to phase out the program after March 5, with an average of roughly 1,000 DACA grants set to expire each day, according to an estimate by the libertarian Cato Institute. But Alsup’s ruling, and a second ruling on Feb. 13 by a district court judge in Brooklyn, blocked the planned phaseout pending the outcome of legal challenges.
The 11,000 individuals who seized the opportunity in January to renew their DACA enrollment represent a small fraction of the roughly 683,000 people who have active DACA grants. But not all 683,000 were eligible to renew. USCIS warns in its paperwork that a renewal application may not be accepted if it’s submitted more than 150 days before an enrollee’s expiration date.
About 22,000 initial applications are still pending, according to USCIS, which said in September that it would not accept new applications.
A sea of uncertainty has enveloped the DACA program since Trump decided to end it. Immigration advocacy organizations moved cautiously in the days after Alsup’s order in January, with some groups eventually advising enrollees to seek the advice of an attorney before proceeding.
An immigration debate in the Senate earlier this month raised hopes that Congress would find a permanent solution for DREAMers brought to the United States as children. But the Senate failed to advance any legislation. Trump and administration officials were most resistant to those plans that had the broadest bipartisan support — a dismal sign for legislative talks.
In addition to the January statistics, newly released USCIS data show how the agency responded to Trump’s demand to sunset the DACA program. From Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, the agency received roughly 44,000 requests for renewals. Of those, 33 percent were rejected before they even entered the processing queue — an abnormally high rate likely due to the Oct. 5 cutoff date.
During the same period one year earlier, only 4 percent of renewals were rejected before the processing stage.
Curiously, USCIS accepted 96 initial DACA applications for processing during the last four months of the year, even after the administration announced that it would no longer process first-time requests.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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