NEW ORLEANS– Immigrants who grew up in the United States after being brought here illegally as children will be among demonstrators outside a federal courthouse in New Orleans on Thursday as three appellate judges hear arguments about the Biden administration’s actions. policies that protect them from deportation.
At stake in the long legal battle unfolding before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the future of some 535,000 long-time U.S. residents, even though they have no citizenship or legal residency status and live with the possibility of a possible deportation.
“No matter what is said and done, I choose the United States and I have a responsibility to make it a better place for all of us,” Greisa Martinez Rosas said Wednesday. She is a beneficiary of the policy and leader of the advocacy group United We Dream. She plans to travel from Arizona to attend a rally at the courthouse, where hundreds of supporters of the policy are expected to gather.
The panel’s arguments will not immediately rule. Whatever they decide, the case will almost certainly end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Former President Barack Obama first introduced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012, citing Congress’s inaction on legislation aimed at giving those brought to the U.S. as youth a path to legal status and citizenship. Years of lawsuits followed. President Joe Biden renewed the program in hopes of gaining court approval.
But in September 2023, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Houston said the executive branch had exceeded its authority in creating the program. Hanen banned the government from approving new applications but left the program intact during appeals for existing recipients, known as “Dreamers.”
Defenders of the policy argue that Congress has given the executive branch’s Department of Homeland Security the authority to set immigration policy, and that the states challenging the program have no basis to sue.
“They cannot identify any harms that result from DACA,” Nina Perales, vice president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said at a news conference this week.
Texas leads a group of Republican-dominated states challenging the policy. The Texas attorney general’s office did not respond to an emailed interview request. But in short, they and other challengers argue that states would incur hundreds of millions of dollars in health care, education and other costs if immigrants are allowed to remain in the country illegally. The other states are Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas and Mississippi.
One of these states’ allies in lawsuits is the Immigration Reform Law Institute. “Congress has repeatedly refused to legalize DACA recipients, and no administration can take that step in its place,” the group’s executive director, Dale L. Wilcox, said in a statement earlier this year.
The panel hearing the case includes Judges Jerry Smith, nominated to the 5th Circuit by former President Ronald Reagan; Edith Brown Clement, nominated by former President George W. Bush; and Stephen Higginson, nominated by Obama.
