Biden administration urges 5th Circuit to save DACA program

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

64% : DACA was the foundation for those programs.
62% : Some of the world's most valuable firms, including Amazon, Apple and Google, joined by dozens of other companies and business associations, also voiced support for DACA in an amicus brief.
60% : Even former President Donald Trump, whose bid to end the program was blocked in a 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court in June 2020, said early in his presidency DACA was a "very, very difficult subject" for him because "you have some absolutely incredible kids."
56% : Texas claims the more than 100,000 DACA recipients in the state cost it over $250 million per year in social services, health care and education costs, and that they have an advantage in obtaining jobs because under the Affordable Care Act businesses don't have to provide them with health insurance as they do for other employees.
55% : But no group of undocumented immigrants has garnered more sympathy, with numerous polls showing a large majority of Americans support giving DACA recipients, also known as "Dreamers," a pathway to citizenship.
53% : The District of Columbia and 22 states either led by Democratic governors or with one legislative chamber controlled by Democrats said in an amicus brief they have a profound interest in keeping DACA alive. "More than 344,000 DACA recipients live in amici states, where they are valued members of the community and vital members of the workforce who contribute to the tax base," their brief states.
51% : At root, Texas' argument that DACA is unlawful relies on age-old nativist grievances: Undocumented immigrants take jobs that could go to unemployed U.S. citizens and residents, and they are a drain on states' taxpayer-funded budgets.
51% : DACA gives them protection from deportation and allows them to get federal work permits and driver's licenses for renewable two-year periods.
50% : "Texas chose to challenge DACA only years after policy issued," Feigenbaum said.
49% : Juan José Martinez-Guevara, a DACA recipient and Texas Advocacy Coordinator of United We Dream, said he believes the program is not only legal but is the "morally correct thing to do." "I don't believe Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the other people bringing this case against DACA have any sort of standing," he continued, "because they haven't been able to prove this program is harmful to Texas or the other states." Having lived in the U.S. since he was 3, Martinez-Guevara said he does not want to even imagine what making the decision to return to his home country Mexico would feel like.
48% : "DACA recipients have helped to drive and sustain the American economy by filling crucial labor shortages, creating new businesses, spending their incomes on American products and services, and paying taxes.
47% : While Texas successfully argued it had standing in the DAPA case because people enrolled in the program would have qualified for driver's licenses and the Lone Star State subsidizes drivers licenses - it does not make applicants pay $130 in processing fees - it made no mention of those costs in the latest DACA litigation, instead basing its standing on its purported costs providing health care, social services and education to DACA recipients.
45% : Now that we're a full decade later eliminating DACA would cause extraordinary disruption for recipients, their U.S. citizen children, employers and states." He focused on the hundreds of DACA recipients who serve in the U.S. military.
44% : But U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee, pointed out a survey of 3,000 DACA recipients in 2017 by an expert retained by New Jersey found around 22% said they were likely to leave the country if DACA's eliminated.
44% : In determining DACA is unlawful, Hanen found DHS had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by starting the program without first putting it through a public notice-and-comment period as required of substantive rule changes, rejecting the government's insistence it is a policy statement exempt from that process.
42% : In 2015, the majority of another three-judge panel of the appellate court held a similar program Obama unveiled in 2014 called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA - for which an estimated 4.3 million people would have qualified - along with an expansion of who qualified for DACA, did not pass muster under the Administrative Procedure Act.
40% : Turning to the crux of the case, Boynton said DACA is merely part of the government's solution to its lack of resources to deport the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. without papers.
39% : Invalidating DACA will therefore inflict serious harm on U.S. companies, workers, and the American economy as a whole," they wrote.
37% : U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, a George W. Bush appointee, declared DACA unlawful in July 2021.
36% : Arguing before a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit on Wednesday in New Orleans, New Jersey Assistant Attorney General Jeremy Feigenbaum said Hanen was wrong to vacate the 2012 memo creating DACA and should have remanded it to DHS instead to fix any defects.
35% : Joined by eight other Republican-led states, Texas sued in May 2018 to undo the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, arguing then-President Barack Obama overstepped his authority when he launched DACA in 2012 as a workaround of Congress' inability to pass legislation reforming the nation's immigration laws.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.