Trump administration says it will reject new DACA applications during review

White House believes DACA still illegal despite Supreme Court ruling

The White House announced Tuesday that it would be rejecting applications for the DACA immigration programme while it conducts a review of the policy.

According to NBC News, the Trump administration still views the DACA programme — which provides a way for children who were brought into the country illegally to legally live and work in the US — as illegal, despite a US Supreme Court ruling in favour of the policy.

An administration official speaking anonymously told NBC News that the White House believes the Supreme Court ruling allowed pathways for dismantling the programmme, despite its judgement.

During the administration’s review of the programme, it said it would reject any new applications to the programme. It will also review applications for renewal on a case-by-case basis and only allow renewals for a one-year period rather than the previous two-year period.

According to NPR, individuals applying to DACA have reported the government has been rejecting their applications for weeks.

Donald Trump has been trying to end DACA since 2017, but was thwarted by a recent Supreme Court ruling. He called the ruling “politically charged” and vowed to end the programme, which was one of his campaign promises.

The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could not dismantle the programme because it did not provide adequate justification for doing so. Though dismantling the programme is not unconstitutional, the administration’s reasons for doing so were ruled insufficient.

The White House review is the latest in the Trump administration’s attempts to slow down the DACA programme while searching for a route to bring it to an end.

Last week, the Trump administration told a district court in Maryland that it hadn’t accepted nor rejected DACA applications, but that the applications were “on hold”. The court ordered the administration to operate the programme as it was intended, but the Trump administration is side-stepping the order by issuing memos that allow the US Department of Homeland Security to continue holding the programme in limbo.

The DACA programme was created during the presidency of Barack Obama and was intended to prevent the deportation of children who were brought into the country illegally.

The programme does not provide a pathway to citizenship, but it does allow participants to live and work in the country for up to two years at a time, and enrolment in the programme is renewable.

Under current court orders, the programme should be operating as normal, but the US Citizenship and Immigration Services has effectively been ignoring the ruling, and claims the court’s ruling “has no basis in law”. The agency’s director, Joseph Edlow, told NPR that the programme was an “effective amnesty programme” despite providing no pathway towards citizenship.