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- President Joe Biden said he was “deeply” disappointed a federal judge struck down DACA.
- The Obama-era program allows undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children to obtain work permits to stay.
- Biden said the Department of Justice would appeal the judge’s Friday decision.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
President Joe Biden on Saturday said he was “deeply” disappointed with a federal judge’s decision to strike down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and said the Department of Justice would appeal the decision.
A federal judge in Texas on Friday found DACA unlawful and barred the US government from accepting new applications to the program.
“Yesterday’s Federal court ruling is deeply disappointing,” Biden said in a statement Saturday. “While the court’s order does not now affect current DACA recipients, this decision nonetheless relegates hundreds of thousands of young immigrants to an uncertain future.”
Biden said the DOJ would appeal the decision and the Department of Homeland Security planned to soon issue a proposed rule about DACA.
The DHS in March announced it was working on introducing a proposed rule to protect DACA. But the president Saturday implored Congress to act to create a “path to citizenship for Dreamers.”
“I have repeatedly called on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act, and I now renew that call with the greatest urgency,” he said. “It is my fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally provide security to all Dreamers, who have lived too long in fear.”
The American Dream and Promise Act passed the House in March and would provide a pathway to citizenship for the 2.3 million Dreamers living in the US, Insider previously reported.
US District Judge Andrew Hanen on Friday sided with Texas and several other conservative states who sued over DACA, finding that the program, created under the administration of President Barack Obama in 2012, was “created in violation of the law and whose existence violates the law.”
He said Obama overstepped his authority in creating the program, which allows undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children – called Dreamers – to apply and obtain a work permit to legally stay in the country.
The program has been a frequent target of Republicans and was targeted during President Donald Trump’s administration, who attempted to dismantle it. Biden on his first day in office signed an executive order that called on the secretary of homeland security and the attorney general to “take all actions he deems appropriate, consistent with applicable law, to preserve and fortify DACA.”
The Supreme Court last year issued a ruling that upheld DACA in the face of the Trump administration’s attempts to destroy it.
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