US federal judge blocks new applications to ‘Dreamers’ programme, which protects immigrants brought to the US as children

District Judge Andrew Hanen sided with states suing to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme and argued it was illegally created

Hanen said the order does not require the government to take ‘any immigration, deportation or criminal action against any DACA recipient’

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DACA recipients and their supporters rally outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, in June 2020. A federal judge in Texas on Friday ordered an end to the Obama-era programme, which prevented the deportations of some immigrants brought into the United States as children. Photo: TNS

Published: 8:02am, 17 Jul 2021Updated: 9:28pm, 17 Jul 2021

A United States federal judge in Texas on Friday blocked new applications to a programme that protects immigrants who were brought to the US as children from deportation, but said the hundreds of thousands of people already enrolled would not be affected until further court rulings.

US District Judge Andrew Hanen sided with a group of states suing to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme, arguing that it was illegally created by former president Barack Obama in 2012.

Hanen found the programme violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) when it was created but said that since there were so many people currently enrolled in the programme – almost 650,000 – his ruling would be temporarily stayed for their cases and their renewal applications.

Immigrant youth and DACA advocates at a rally in November 2019. Photo: AP

“To be clear,” the judge said, the order does not require the government to take “any immigration, deportation or criminal action against any DACA recipient”.

He said the government could continue to receive new applications to the programme, as ordered by a federal judge in a separate case, but that it could not approve them.