DACA Update

On October 5, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a decision on the legality of the 2012 Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) policy. The court partially affirmed the district court’s July 2021 decision declaring the 2012 DACA policy unlawful. However, the court of appeals preserved the partial stay issued by the district court in July 2021 and remanded the case back to the district court for further proceedings regarding the new DHS DACA regulation published on August 30, 2022 and scheduled to go into effect on Oct. 31, 2022. Note that the decision does “not require DHS or Department of Justice to take any immigration, deportation, or criminal action against any DACA recipient, applicant, or any other individual.”

What does this mean? USCIS can still accept first-time initial DACA requests (meaning USCIS will not reject and return the request) but cannot grant requests at this time due to Judge Hanen’s order and the Fifth Circuit opinion. Current DACA recipients can continue to renew while the court case continues. As always, consult with an immigration attorney for details on specific client cases.

Updates can be found at https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/consideration-of-deferred-action-for-childhood-arrivals-daca/frequently-asked-questions and the National Immigration Law Center has a summary on their site, https://www.nilc.org/issues/daca./