A 2nd federal judge just blocked the Trump administration from ending DACA

Thomson Reuters

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient Gloria Mendoza participates in a demonstration in support of "clean" legislation in New York

• A second federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump's decision to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields young unauthorized immigrants from deportation.
• A judge made a similar decision last month, ordering the Trump administration to resume processing renewal applications for DACA recipients.

A second US judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump's decision to end a program that protects from deportation young unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as children.

US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, cannot end in March as planned, a victory for state attorneys general and immigrants who sued the Republican administration.

The decision is similar to an earlier ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco that DACA must remain in place while litigation over Trump's decision unfolds. The legal battle over DACA could complicate a debate currently underway in Congress on whether to change the nation's immigration laws.

The Supreme Court on Friday is due to consider whether to take up the administration's appeal of the San Francisco ruling. The court could announce as soon as Friday afternoon whether it is hearing the case.

A US Justice Department spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

Often called "Dreamers," hundreds of thousands of young adults, mostly Hispanics, have been granted protection from deportation and given work permits under DACA, which was created in 2012 under Trump's Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.

The plaintiffs had argued that the administration violated federal law by cutting off a program that hundreds of people relied on with little explanation.

In his ruling, Garaufis also questioned the Trump administration's logic in terminating DACA while at the same time advocating for their right to stay in the country, at one point citing Trump's September tweet asking, "Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!"

"Although the Government generally has a substantial interest in the speedy deportation of removable aliens … the court finds that the Government's interest in ending the DACA problem is not so compelling," Garaufis wrote in his ruling. "For one thing, the President has stated his support for keeping DACA recipients in the country."

In the ruling on Tuesday, Garaufis said the Trump administration could eventually rescind the DACA program. However, the reasons it gave last year for winding down the program were too arbitrary and could not stand, the judge said.

Garaufis ordered the government to process both initial requests for DACA status, as well as renewals, on the same terms as had been in place before the administration made its announcement last September.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)