By Elizabeth Ricci, Esq., Managing Partner of Rambana & Ricci, PLLC Immigration Attorneys, Tallahassee, FL
Just over a month ago, the US Supreme Court found that the Trump administration did not take into consideration the effect DACA’s termination would have on the approximately 800,000 beneficiaries known as DREAMers. The court also found that the Trump administration did not give a valid reason to revoke the program. The result should have been that USCIS again accept new DACA requests, travel authorization requests and continue to renew DACAs in two-year increments.
True to form, the White House announced, however, that it would ignore the high court ruling by refusing new DACA requests and travel authorization requests while issuing renewals in increments of only one year.
Jennifer Minear, President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) stated, “The Trump administration is consciously choosing to needlessly throw Dreamers’ lives into turmoil with this decision. The Supreme Court did not require DHS to end DACA, yet DHS is insisting on limiting protections for thousands of Dreamers and barring thousands more from obtaining protection from removal at all. Make no mistake: this is the administration’s next step towards deporting Dreamers from the only country they have ever called home.”
AILA’s Executive Director Benjamin Johnson added, “For the sake of not only Dreamers but our nation, this legal limbo must end. The vast majority of Americans support protecting Dreamers. Now is not the time to upend their lives again. It is time for decisive, compassionate action by Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act and ensure their lives are permanently woven into the fabric of this nation.”
Between this administration’s attempts to end DACA and USCIS’s impending furlough of about half the agency’s employees coupled with a steep fee increase that will go into effect October 2, 2020, aliens are urged to explore immigration options such as stays of removal, U, S or T visas.
