Second federal judge blocks Trump's order to end DACA

DACA supporters at a rally.
(Image credit: ERIC BARADAT/AFP/Getty Images)

A federal judge has blocked President Trump from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, saying the administration's justification was not "legally adequate." Under DACA, which Barack Obama created via executive order, young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children can apply for legal protections. The Trump administration announced in September that the program would expire on March 5. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued to protect DACA, eventually resulting in today's ruling.

This isn't the first time a judge has blocked Trump on DACA. In January, a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to again start accepting DACA renewal applications. Tuesday's ruling goes farther, saying that the Trump administration must start processing new DACA applications.

The judge in Tuesday's ruling called Trump's DACA decision "arbitrary and capricious," and noted that while the administration had claimed that DACA's implementation by Obama was unconstitutional, Trump's tweets about revisiting DACA suggested that he thought the president was well within his right to use executive authority this way.

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The Trump administration has yet to comment publicly on the ruling, which you can read in full here.

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Kelly O'Meara Morales

Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.