Least Biased - Slight liberal lean - Credible

The Biden administration has urged a Texas federal judge to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in a case that threatens protections for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children.

The Justice Department argued Thursday that the administration’s latest version of the DACA program, which provides work permits and deportation relief for certain immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors, is a legal use of the government’s authority to decide which undocumented immigrants to prioritize for deportation.

The Department of Homeland Security’s “resources are limited,” which requires the government to reduce the priority for undocumented immigrants who have strong ties to the country, including those who were brought as children and “have never known another country as home,” the DOJ wrote in a court filing.

“DACA is carefully designed to address a difficult National problem involving severe resource constraints and significant humanitarian and policy concerns,” the government said.

The Justice Department is fighting to protect DACA against a court challenge by a group of Republican-led states that argue they face financial costs for housing and employing recipients of the program, known as “Dreamers.”

Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas previously ruled against the Obama administration’s version of the program but left the policy in place for current recipients. But while the government’s appeal was pending, DHS put the program through the formal regulatory process and published a formal rule to address some of Hanen’s concerns about how the immigration program was issued.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit backed Hanen’s earlier ruling but did not review the latest version of the policy, so it sent the case back to Hanen to consider.