A US federal district court judge in New York on Friday ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to reinstate the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The DACA program allows people who immigrated to the United States illegally as children to apply for a forbearance of removal, and permits them authorization to work and access other federal benefits. In 2017 DHS under President Trump issued a memorandum terminating the popular program, but this past summer the Supreme Court ruled that DHS acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner when it issued the memorandum and therefore could not end the DACA program.
Following that decision, acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf issued a memo ordering the department to reject all pending and future DACA requests and shortening the forbearance time from two years to one. However, Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York ruled in November that, because DHS had not followed its own procedures in appointing an acting secretary, Wolf lacked the authority to act as head of the department and his memo was invalid.
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lennyesq 