Wall Street Journal
By Nicole Hong
February 13, 2018
A second federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily restore an Obama-era program that gives protections to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as children.
The nationwide injunction by a federal judge in Brooklyn comes one month after a similar ruling by a San Francisco federal judge stopped the Trump administration from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
The Supreme Court could announce as early as Friday whether it will take up the issue. The Justice Department appealed the San Francisco decision to both the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and directly to the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration could appeal the Brooklyn ruling to the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. The possibility of dueling appeals-court rulings from the two injunctions would make the Supreme Court more likely to hear the issue, legal experts say.
The Trump administration has said it ended DACA because it considers the program unconstitutional and illegal, a conclusion that U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis called “erroneous” in his ruling Tuesday. The judge said he was issuing the injunction because the administration failed to offer a legally adequate reason for rescinding DACA.
The plaintiffs in the Brooklyn lawsuit include more than a dozen states that sued the Trump administration, arguing that the decision to end DACA violated due process and equal protection rights for DACA recipients. The lawsuit also claimed the move violated federal administrative law, which prohibits actions by federal agencies that are “arbitrary” and “capricious.”
Judge Garaufis’s order said the plaintiffs were “substantially likely” to prevail on their argument that rescinding DACA was arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.
A spokesman for the Justice Department said it “looks forward to vindicating its position in further litigation,” adding that the Department of Homeland Security acted lawfully in deciding to end DACA.
Judge Garaufis said his order doesn’t hold that rescinding DACA is illegal, but that the government failed to articulate valid legal reasons for doing so. The Trump administration isn’t required under the injunction to consider first-time DACA applicants or grant particular renewal requests, he said.
The Trump administration is allowed under the Constitution to end DACA, “even if these policy shifts may impose staggering personal, social and economic costs,” Judge Garaufis wrote.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who led the lawsuit, said he was pleased with the ruling.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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