WASHINGTON—A federal judge in New York invalidated Trump administration rules narrowing the program that protects immigrants living in the U.S. since childhood without legal permission, ruling the restrictions were improperly issued.
The ruling Saturday restores the program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, to near-full operation, after multiple attempts by the Trump administration to end or curtail it. That means, for the first time since September 2017, new applicants who weren’t previously eligible, typically because they were too young, may now apply.
The DACA program was created by the Obama administration in 2012 to protect the young immigrants, known as Dreamers, who have been living in the country without legal permission since childhood, and has been the subject of legal battles for the past three years.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration’s first attempt to end the program didn’t follow the proper procedure required for federal policy-making.
The following month, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf issued a memorandum narrowing the program to existing applicants, who would be offered renewals of only one year, rather than two, and closing the program to any new candidates. The move was intended as an intermediate step while the administration considered whether to make another attempt to end the program entirely, as the Supreme Court had allowed it could do.
That memo was the subject of the latest round of litigation. The judge, Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York, ruled it was improperly issued because Mr. Wolf hadn’t been properly appointed to his acting position.
The ruling is the fifth to find that Mr. Wolf is serving illegally in his acting role, following a Government Accountability Office report that found Mr. Wolf and his predecessor, Kevin McAleenan, both had been improperly appointed under federal law on job vacancies.
“Wolf was not lawfully serving as acting secretary of Homeland Security…when he issued the Wolf Memorandum,” Judge Garaufis, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, concluded in a 31-page opinion.
Judge Garaufis said the ruling applies to anyone who might qualify for DACA under the 2012 memo establishing the program, issued by then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
The ruling doesn’t apply to a small subset of people who are plaintiffs in other DACA lawsuits.
The court’s ruling doesn’t have the effect of removing Mr. Wolf from his role but adds to a growing set of rulings that have found that, as a result of his improper appointment, Mr. Wolf didn’t have the authority to issue numerous immigration and other policies.
Mr. Wolf was nominated by President Trump to serve as the secretary of Homeland Security, but the Senate hasn’t yet taken up his nomination. The department hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed secretary since Kirstjen Nielsen departed in April 2019.
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