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Articles Posted in DACA

It has been reported that President-Elect Joe Biden will unveil a comprehensive immigration plan on his first day in office.  The plan, which would provide a multi-year pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants currently in the United States, is expected to be sent to Congress on Wednesday, shortly after the inauguration.

The central tenet of Biden’s plan is the pathway to citizenship, which would allow certain undocumented immigrants to achieve citizenship within eight years. The plan, as reported, would give certain immigrants temporary status for five years, allow them to apply for green cards after that time and once they have met certain criteria, then allow them to apply for citizenship three years later.

For recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — so-called Dreamers who were protected under a program first started by President Barack Obama — the pathway would be streamlined, allowing them to apply for a green card immediately.

On June 18, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Trump Administration failed to provide an adequate justification for terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, thus violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). DACA remains in place for now, but the Trump Administration could renew its efforts to terminate the program.

In today’s decision, the Court did not rule on the legality of the DACA program as a whole, only on the manner in which the Administration tried to dismantle it. Though the Court held that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to terminate DACA was arbitrary and capricious, the decision makes clear that the Department of Homeland Security has the authority to rescind the program, provided it follows proper administrative procedure.

Created in 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program offered deportation relief and employment authorization to certain undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, also known as Dreamers.

Last Friday, February 10, for the first time under President Trump, an individual covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (“DACA”) was taken into custody. Daniel Ramirez Medina, a 23-year-old with no criminal record who was brought to the United States from Mexico when he was seven years old, filed a challenge to his detention in Seattle the Monday following his arrest, arguing that the government violated his constitutional rights because he had work authorization under the DACA program.

Immigration Customs Enforcement (“ICE”)  spokeswoman Rose Richeson issued an official ICE statement claiming that Daniel Ramirez was a “self-admitted gang member,” alleging that “ICE officers took Mr. Ramirez into custody based on his admitted gang affiliation and risk to public safety.”

In response, Mark Rosenbaum, one of Daniel Ramirez’s attorneys, strongly refuted the allegation, saying in a statement: “Mr. Ramirez unequivocally denies being in a gang. While in custody, he was repeatedly pressured by ICE agents to falsely admit affiliation.”

President-elect Trump’s hardline statements on immigration, which are often peppered with shifting details, have left millions of Americans uncertain about their future status in the U.S. More than 700,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children are protected currently by Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”), established by President Obama, and another four to five million were eligible for protection under a similar program for parents of U.S. citizens and lawful residents.  Many of these families’ information could be stored in federal systems, allowing for targeted removal under the Trump administration.

Below are two of the less discussed areas where some of the national debate over immigration policy may take place under the soon-to-be President Trump:

Sanctuary Cities:

(This is part two of our three-part series on the development of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, with a look at President Obama’s its proposed expansion and the development of DAPA)

On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced an expansion of the DACA program which increased the pool of potential DACA applicants by easing some of the restrictions that were previously in place. President Obama also initiated a program called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents or DAPA which would have protected the undocumented parents of US citizen children or lawful permanent resident (LPR) children.

The proposed DACA expansion had three significant changes:

(This begins our three-part series on the development of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, its proposed expansion, DAPA, and the recent developments in the US Supreme Court)

On June 15, 2012, President Barack Obama unveiled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) to protect certain classes of undocumented immigrants. Under this program, the US Department of Homeland Security would not remove undocumented youth who had come to the United States as children if they had met certain criteria. Instead, these youth would be “DACAmented” and given a number of benefits that were previously unavailable to them, including the temporary permission to stay in the US under “deferred action.”

To be eligible for the initial DACA guidelines, an applicant must:

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