Maria Sachetti, Washington Post, April 24, 2018

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U.S. District Judge John D. Bates on Tuesday called the government’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program “virtually unexplained” and therefore “unlawful.” However, he stayed his ruling for 90 days to give the Department of Homeland Security a chance to provide more solid reasoning for ending the program.

Bates is the third judge to rule against Trump administration attempts to rescind DACA, {snip}

In his decision, Bates said the decision to phase out the program starting in March “was arbitrary and capricious because the Department failed adequately to explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful.”

“Each day that the agency delays is a day that aliens who might otherwise be eligible for initial grants of DACA benefits are exposed to removal because of an unlawful agency action,” Bates wrote.

Federal judges in California and New York have also blocked the administration’s plans on those grounds, and ordered the administration to renew work permits for immigrants enrolled in the program.

But the ruling by Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush, is far more expansive: If the government does not come up with a better explanation within 90 days, he will rescind the government memo that terminated the program and require Homeland Security to enroll new applicants, as well. Thousands could be eligible to apply.

The cases were brought by the NAACP, Microsoft, Princeton University and a student.

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Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, said, “We hope this decision will help provide new incentive for the legislative solution the country and these individuals so clearly deserve. As the business community has come to appreciate, a lasting solution for the country’s dreamers is both an economic imperative and a humanitarian necessity.”

The Trump administration said it is reviewing the decision. In a statement, the Justice Department pointed out that a similar Obama-era program for immigrant parents failed to survive a court challenge, and said ending DACA was part of its efforts to protect the border and enforce the rule of law.

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A federal judge in Maryland recently ruled in favor of the government in a different DACA case.

The Trump administration says it decided to end DACA because Texas and other states had threatened to sue over it, and the government believed the program would not survive a court challenge. Bates ruled that the government’s “meager legal reasoning” — and the threat of a lawsuit — did not justify terminating the program.

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