Here’s the Latest on Trump’s DACA Legal Battle

According to NBC News, a federal judge on Tuesday night ordered the Trump administration to revive part of the program that protected people who were illegally brought to the United States as children from being deported, calling the administration’s abrupt decision to end the program last year “arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.”

The ruling came after a bipartisan meeting between President Donald Trump and members of Congress on how to address the fate of undocumented immigrants under the program.

The Department of Homeland Security rescinded DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) in September and said it would stop accepting applications from people covered under the act to renew their two-year DACA permits. The administration said the repeal would take effect in March.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday night in San Francisco ordering the Department of Homeland Security to resume accepting renewal applications from people who are already protected under DACA while challenges to the September order work their way through the courts. But the judge ruled that the department doesn’t have to accept new applications.

Alsup, who was nominated to the court by President Bill Clinton, scolded the DHS for having presented no analysis of the impact its order would have on the almost 700,000 young people “who had come to rely on DACA to live and to work in this country.”

The White House ripped the decision in a statement Wednesday morning, saying that it was “outrageous, especially in light of the President’s successful bipartisan meeting with House and Senate members at the White House on the same day.”

Trump responded in a tweet Wednesday morning, blaming the ruling on the “unfair” court system. “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,” Trump wrote.

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.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018

Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement to the Associated Press, “The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend this position, and looks forward to vindicating its position in further litigation.”