Immigrants who grew up in the United States after being brought to the country irregularly as children will protest before a federal appeals court that will hear arguments about DACA, the government policy that protects them from deportation.
Some immigrants who grew up in the United States after being brought illegally as children will demonstrate outside a federal courthouse in New Orleans on Thursday, when three appeals judges will hear arguments over the Biden administration's policy that protects them from deportation.
In the long legal battle being waged in the 5th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the future of some 535,000 people who have been living in the United States for a long time, although they do not have US citizenship or legal residency, and live with possibility of being deported.
“No matter what is said or done, I chose the United States and I have the responsibility to make it a better place for all of us,” Greisa Martínez Rosas said Wednesday. She is a political beneficiary and leader of the advocacy group United We Dream. He plans to travel from Arizona to attend a rally near the courthouse, where hundreds of political supporters are expected to gather.
The court hearing the arguments will not rule immediately. Whatever their decision, the case is almost certain to end up before the federal Supreme Court.
Former President Barack Obama launched the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, citing congressional inaction on legislation aimed at giving those brought to the United States as children a path to regularization of their immigration status and naturalization. Years of litigation followed. President Joe Biden renewed the program in hopes of winning court approval.
But in September 2023, Houston-based federal Judge Andrew Hanen declared that the executive branch had overstepped its authority in creating the program. Hanen prohibited the government from approving new applications, but left the program intact for existing beneficiaries, known as “dreamers,” during appeals.
Advocates of the policy argue that Congress has given the Department of Homeland Security — which falls under the executive branch — the authority to set immigration policy, and that states challenging the program have no basis to sue.
“They cannot identify any harm from DACA,” Nina Perales, vice president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), said at a press conference this week.
Texas leads a group of Republican-governed states challenging the policy. The Texas Attorney General's Office did not respond to an email interview request. But in briefs, they and other plaintiffs claim that states spend hundreds of millions of dollars on health care, education and other items when immigrants are allowed to remain in the country illegally. The other states are Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas and Mississippi.
Among those states' allies in judicial briefs is the Immigration Reform Law Institute.
“Congress has repeatedly refused to legalize DACA recipients, and no government can take that step in their place,” the group's executive director, Dale L. Wilcox, said in a statement released this year.
The panel handling the case is made up of Judges Jerry Smith, nominated to the 5th Circuit by former President Ronald Reagan; Edith Brown Clement, nominated by former President George W. Bush; and Stephen Higginson, nominated by Obama.