A 2-1 decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week “takes us one step closer to holding the Administration accountable for its decision to rescind the ”Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra:
An appeals court has cleared the way for a federal judge to force the Trump administration to make public more of its internal documents on the decision to rescind the program granting quasi-legal status and work permits to so-called Dreamers.
A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted, 2-1, to rebuff the Justice Department’s attempt to halt U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup’s order that the administration turn over emails, letters, memos and legal opinions considered in the course of the decision announced in September to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created in 2012 under President Barack Obama.
Trump administration lawyers argued that Alsup’s order clearly exceeded his authority, but the majority of the 9th Circuit panel disagreed.
According to Politico, the judges criticized how few memos and documents the administration has released in response to the numerous DACA-related lawsuits it has faced, writing in an opinion that “put bluntly, the notion that the head of a United States agency would decide to terminate a program giving legal protections to roughly 800,000 people based solely on 256 pages of publicly available documents is not credible”:
The San Francisco-based Alsup also ordered disclosure of information about former Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly’s decision in February to allow the DACA program to continue even as other programs set up to aid undocumented immigrants were abandoned. The appeals court’s new ruling also declined to disturb that decision.
While Justice Department lawyers argued that disclosing the additional information would intrude on executive branch and perhaps even presidential prerogatives, Wardlaw and Gould did not buy that.
Following this week’s decision, Judge Alsup “ordered the Trump administration to file the expanded set of DACA-related records in the court's public docket by Wednesday at noon (Pacific Time).”
The appeal court’s decision is another win for immigrant youth following another decision this week from the Department of Homeland Security to reconsider possibly hundreds of DACA renewal applications that were rejected due to Post Office and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) delays. While these victories are important, immigrant youth need permanent relief in the form of the DREAM Act.