(CN) — A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals declared the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy unlawful on Friday, just days before the second inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to rescind the program in his first term and ran on a platform of mass deportations in his second campaign.
The Obama-era program has enabled hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants — colloquially known as “Dreamers” — who came to the United States as children to receive temporary lawful status, providing them with protection from deportation as well as allowing them to legally work in the U.S. There were roughly 538,000 immigrants enrolled in DACA as of the end of September 2024, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
In their Friday decision, the panel upheld a Texas federal judge’s ruling vacating the program, holding that a Biden administration attempt to codify DACA violates U.S. immigration law.
“In the [Immigration and Nationality Act], Congress enacted a ‘comprehensive federal statutory scheme for regulation of immigration and naturalization’ and ‘set the terms and conditions of admission to the country.’ Because it chose not to include DACA recipients in that comprehensive scheme, ‘Congress’s rigorous classification scheme forecloses the contrary scheme in the DACA Memorandum,'” U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith wrote in the ruling.
However, the panel paused its decision for recipients who are currently in the program pending further rulings by either the Fifth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court. This means current beneficiaries can still renew their status, but the program is closed to new applicants, as has been the case for several years.
In a partial victory for the Biden administration, the panel agreed with its argument that the lower court’s total nationwide injunction was overbroad.
Friday’s ruling narrows the scope of the injunction to cover only Texas, which leads a coalition of conservative states challenging the program. The panel found that Texas was the only state that had demonstrated injury from the policy. Texas has argued it’s harmed by the DACA program through increased costs in education, healthcare and social services.
In a statement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the ruling “a win for Texas.”
“I look forward to working with President-elect Donald Trump to ensure that the rule of law is restored, and the illegal immigration crisis is finally stopped,” Paxton said. “Biden’s policies unleashed historic levels of lawlessness upon this country, and it is time to start fixing the mess the outgoing administration made.”
The panel also ruled that the portion of the program providing deportation protection can be legally separated from the work authorization part of the policy, allowing immigration authorities to continue to defer the removal of DACA recipients even though the work authorization portion is blocked.
The panel remanded the case back down to George W. Bush appointee U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Texas, who has ruled against the program several times.
Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee, was joined on the panel by U.S. Circuit Judges Edith Brown Clement, a George H. W. Bush appointee, and Stephen Higginson, a Barack Obama appointee.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer decried the panel’s decision, calling the Fifth Circuit “a renegade court” in a statement and saying that DACA recipients “have been in this country since childhood and are looking for nothing more than to fulfill their own American Dream in the only country they have ever called home.”
“President-Elect Donald Trump has said that he wants to do ‘something about the Dreamers’ and that he will work with Democrats on a plan, something I will take him up on while he is in office,” Schumer said. “Senate Democrats remain committed to working in a bipartisan way on a long-term and meaningful path forward to protect Dreamers.”