Dygue advocates defend program in court

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Dygue advocates defend program in court

Attorneys representing young immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, better known as DACA, defended the legality of the program before a court in Texas on Thursday in an effort to keep it alive.

The judge presiding over the hearing was the same one who declared DACA illegal in 2021, closing the program for new applicants. At the time, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, a U.S. District Judge, said the administration failed to follow federal administrative rules in launching the program in 2012.

In 2012, President Barack Obama imposed DACA, an executive order that allowed eligible undocumented young adults who came to the U.S. as children to work and study without fear of deportation.

Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and an attorney for DACA recipients in a legal challenge brought against the program by Texas and other Republican-led states, said the case went back to Hanen's court to consider a recently Biden administration rule that turned the program into a federal regulation to increase its chances of surviving legal challenges.

The nine states that have sued to end DACA lack standing to sue, Mr. Perales said, adding that the states have not been able to prove that DACA has caused them any harm or injury.

We should not be in court, at all having to defend DACA, Mr. Perales said.

Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas and Texas were among the states that filed lawsuits.

The states argued that the updated program, which was created in 2012, is essentially the same as the 2012 memo that first created it and remains unlawful and unconstitutional. The states also argued that the White House overstepped its authority by granting immigration benefits to Congress that are for Congress to decide.

Perales and her team argued that DACA is legal because it's the byproduct of a lawful exercise of executive discretion over immigration.

DACA is also consistent with other policies the U.S. government has implemented in the past that provide deportation relief in exchange for permission to work, Mr. Perales said in a phone call with reporters Tuesday.

The majority of the DACA recipients are from Latin American countries, and the majority are born in Mexico and other Latin American countries. Gaby Pacheco of The Dream says the average DACA recipient is between the ages of 26 and 28. US, an organization that helps Dreamers go to college, is working with DACA recipients and other immigrant youth known as DACA recipients.

Now, they have more to lose because many of them are already 10 years in the workforce, they have careers, they have families, he said.

Maritza Gutierrez, a DACA recipient, who was among more than 50 people gathered at a park near the courthouse, urged Congress to pass a permanent solution, not something that needs to be renewed every two years. In Spanish, Gutierrez said, stop using our lives and that of our children as political pawns.

Hanen is not expected to rule immediately after Thursday's court hearing. The decision he made could eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time.