From Texas Standard:
Applicants to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program are facing more uncertainty after the Trump administration announced this week that it would reject all new applications to the program. That came after dozens of young, potential DACA recipients in Houston filed a lawsuit against the federal government earlier this month. The plaintiffs are moving ahead with their lawsuit amid the Trump administration decision.
DACA is the program that gives young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children the ability to live and work in the United States.
Benjamin Wermund has been covering the story for the Houston Chronicle. He says the plaintiffs are eligible for DACA but aren’t yet enrolled in the program.
“They’re suing because the Trump administration had, until yesterday, basically been collecting applications but just setting them aside, not acting on them,” Wermund told the Texas Standard’s Joy Díaz.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the Trump administration from ending the program altogether. Then a U.S. District Court in Maryland ruled that the administration needed to process the pending DACA applications, though it didn’t put a deadline on that requirement.
Wermund said the purpose of the Houston would-be Dreamers’ lawsuit is to get a date attached to that requirement, and speed up the process.
“There was this brief moment after the Supreme Court ruling where they felt a ton of relief and excitement at the potential of actually getting to apply for this,” Wermund said of the young people in the Houston lawsuit.
“It looks like they’re kind of back to where they were before, in terms of just waiting and stuck in limbo, which is sort of a cliché with DACA people at this point,” he added.
Web story by Sarah Gabrielli.
