A federal judge in San Francisco is blocking President Trump's plans to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The program, created by an executive order by President Obama provides protections for illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as young children. Last year, Trump put a time limit on those protections and passed the fate of the Obama-era program over to Congress. Judge William Alsup ruled that the plaintiffs would likely succeed in arguing that the decision to end DACA was arbitrary.
The ruling was not a total defeat for the Trump administration. Judge Alsup said that the government did not need to process new applications, but must continue to process renewals for people already covered by the program.
The White House is blasting the court ruling. In a statement, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders called the ruling outrageous. Sanders said it should be up to Congress to solve the DACA issue, not the courts.
Trump took to Twitter to slam the decision:
It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts.
President Trump has challenged lawmakers to craft a long-term solution to keep millions of Dreamers in the U.S. Dreamers are young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Trump has made an effort to tie continued DACA protection to funding for a border wall with Mexico.