What's happening with the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrival program? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer, practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. As many of you know, the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals program was set up under President Obama. And what it did was it created a priority system of who the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to focus on when it came to deportation.
And what the Obama administration said was that we're going to focus on criminals and people who routinely violate our immigration laws by sneaking into the United States, and that we're going to put at the bottom of the list young people who came to the United States, through no fault of their own, and as long as you were here within a certain time period as a child, you were eligible to have your deportation paused, halted, administratively closed, and to obtain work authorization, and getting that work authorization really helped these kids. They were able to get social security numbers, and then they have been able to work legally in the United States, to pay taxes, and to build a life in the United States.
Well, when President Trump took office, he decided that he was going to cancel the DACA program, although he had made proclamations and sayings that he was going to protect the dreamers. He really had no such intention, and as soon as he could, he tried to revoke the DACA program. Well, some really fine lawyers filed a lawsuit and challenged the way that the president struck down DACA. And they took it all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had not followed the Administrative Procedures Act, had not followed federal law in revoking the DACA program. And they ordered it reinstated. Actually they sent it back to a lower court who ordered it reinstated.
Well, now the Supreme Court's ruling means that DACA is back in place, and there's no legal reason why USCIS should not be accepting new DACA applications and renewing DACA for people that are eligible. But the Trump administration, as lawless as it is, is not following the judge's order, and they're not accepting DACA applications at this time, not new applications.
Some people have gotten some on file, and we're starting to hear back about those, but the Trump administration has said in court that they're not going to do that. And so at the moment, the Trump administration is not following the law and DACA applications, new applications, are not being accepted.
This is wrong and it should be challenged in court, and I know the judge is going to have a hearing on it and probably maybe hold the government in contempt. I don't know what mechanism the judge will use to force them to do it, but just know that Homeland Security and USCIS in particular are not following the law once again.
So if you're eligible for DACA or eligible for a DACA renewal, you should be working to get an application ready, if and when they decide to start accepting these applications again, especially if it's a new application.
So if you have questions about this, give us a call at 314-961-8200. You can email us at infoathackinglawpractice.com. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. And if you liked this video, we ask that you please share it out on social so that you get updates whenever we make videos, just like this one. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
