A federal district judge on Friday denied the state of Texas’ request that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program be put on hold after Texas and nine other states sued to halt the Obama-era program.
DACA was launched in 2012 and grants recipients a renewable, two-year work permit and a reprieve from deportation proceedings for immigrants who were brought to the United States while they were children. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen said the states could likely prove that DACA causes the states irreparable harm. But Hannen wrote that the states delayed in seeking the relief for years. He added that there was an abundance of evidence to show that ending the program “was in contrary to the best interests of the pubic.”
His decision means that hundreds of thousands of the program’s recipients can continue applying to renew their status — for now.
“Here, the egg has been scrambled. To try to put it back in the shell with only a preliminary injunction record, and perhaps at great risk to many, does not make sense nor serve the best interests of this country,” Hanen wrote.
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The case will now likely proceed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, said Nina Perales, MALDEF’s vice-president of litigation, who argued the case earlier this month.
She said she disagreed with Hanen’s assertion that the way DACA was implemented violated the federal Administrative Procedures Act, which governs how federal regulations are made, and said Paxton’s predictions that Texas will succeed are overshadowed by Friday’s decision.
“The question that was presented to the court was decided in our favor. General Paxton can make predictions about what will happen later in this case,” she said. “But General Paxton lost today and DACA recipients won today. We have three federal court injunctions keeping DACA alive right now. Texas was hoping that Judge Hanen wold enter an injunction going in the other direction and Judge Hanen declined to do that.”
See here for the background. The state has 21 days to file an appeal to get the Fifth Circuit to grant the injunction it sought, and the court will proceed with the case after that. You know how I feel about this. I’m not going to guess what may happen from here, but at least nothing has been screwed up yet. The court’s order is here, and Daily Kos has more.