John, 

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit punted Texas v. United States back to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, keeping the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in a continuing state of limbo and delaying relief for millions.

For a decade now, DACA has protected hundreds of thousands of young people from deportation. It has provided Dreamers who came to America as children with the legal security and work authorization they needed to pursue higher education, land jobs, build families and create a life here. But it was never secure or safe from partisan attacks.
 

In July 2021, a federal judge in Texas ruled that DACA was illegally implemented and called for its termination, reasoning that President Obama exceeded his authority when he created DACA. The Biden Administration appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and, yesterday, the appeals court rendered its decision. The Fifth Circuit agreed that the 2012 DACA memo was unlawful and kicked the case back down to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to decide whether the Biden administration’s 2022 DACA final rule is lawful. This means the future of the DACA program continues to be under threat. More than 600,000 DACA recipients must continue to live their lives incrementally from court case to court case, forever in fear of being ripped from their families, communities and the only place they have ever known as home. 

Although yesterday’s decision allows current DACA recipients to apply for renewals, it continues to cruelly prevent the government from approving any new applications to the program. 

DACA has allowed immigrant youth to attend school, join the workforce, and live free from fear of deportation. To continuously shuttle DACA through different courts, keeping it in limbo, is to devalue and ignore the contributions this policy has made to our state and country. The future of our immigrant communities shouldn’t be left up to any one court decision—it should be enshrined in our nation’s laws. Our elected leaders in Washington must act now and provide permanent legal protections to DACA and TPS recipients, and all those who call our country home, but lack a pathway to permanent residency and citizenship.

SÍ, Se Puede!

Murad Awawdeh