immigration

DACA Renewal Applications Are Being Processed Again

Thirty-year-old cosmetology teacher Maria Valdez, a DACA recipient who came to the U.S. with her parents from Paraguay at the age of six. Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service announced on Saturday that it will resume processing DACA recipients’ renewal applications in accordance with last week’s ruling by a federal judge blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to end the Obama-era program. The USCIS will not be accepting new applications for DACA, only renewal applications for those already registered in the program.

Negotiations on a deal to provide DACA recipients with permanent legal status hit a wall last week when Trump reportedly rejected a bipartisan proposal to save the program, and then later derided Haiti and all of Africa’s nations as “shithole” countries. On Sunday, Trump tweeted that “DACA is probably dead,” and once again tried to blame Democrats for not coming up with a palatable deal.

In September, President Trump announced that he was cancelling the Obama-era DACA program, which protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and provides them with work permits. Trump gave Congress until March to come up with legislation to replace the program. On Tuesday, a U.S. district judge ordered the Trump administration to resume processing DACA renewal applications while striking down legal challenges to Trump’s cancellation order, which the judge described as “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or not otherwise in accordance with law.”

DACA Renewal Applications Are Being Processed Again