On January 3, 2018, former Department of Homeland Security Secretaries Michael Chertoff, Jeh Johnson, and Janet Napolitano sent a letter to Republican and Democratic congressional leaders urging swift passage of legislation to allow about 700,000 “Dreamers” under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to continue to live and work in the United States.

Specifically, the former DHS secretaries urged passage of a DACA bill by January 19, 2018, as a “best-case deadline.” They noted that this would provide enough time for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to process applications “before tens of thousands of DACA recipients are negatively impacted by the loss of their work authorization or removal from the United States.” They warned that by the Trump administration’s March 5 deadline, the number of DACA recipients losing status “skyrockets to an average of 1,200 a day.”

The DHS secretaries further warned that if DACA recipients lose their work authorization, this would create uncertainty and negatively affect the business community that has hired 90 percent of them.” Congressional delay past the next few weeks will force the employers of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients into a state of instability” in which they must plan to lose employees, the letter said.

In the meantime, on January 13, 2018, USCIS resumed accepting renewal applications for DACA based on a federal court order: “Until further notice, and unless otherwise provided in this guidance, the DACA policy will be operated on the terms in place before it was rescinded on Sept. 5, 2017.” The notice states:

Individuals who were previously granted deferred action under DACA may request renewal by filing Form I-821D (PDF), Form I-765 (PDF), and Form I-765 Worksheet (PDF), with the appropriate fee or approved fee exemption request, at the USCIS designated filing location, and in accordance with the instructions to the Form I-821D (PDF) and Form I-765 (PDF). USCIS is not accepting requests from individuals who have never before been granted deferred action under DACA. USCIS will not accept or approve advance parole requests from DACA recipients.

If you previously received DACA and your DACA expired on or after Sept. 5, 2016, you may still file your DACA request as a renewal request. Please list the date your prior DACA ended in the appropriate box on Part 1 of the Form I-821D.

If you previously received DACA and your DACA expired before Sept. 5, 2016, or your DACA was previously terminated at any time, you cannot request DACA as a renewal (because renewal requests typically must be submitted within one year of the expiration date of your last period of deferred action approved under DACA), but may nonetheless file a new initial DACA request in accordance with the Form I-821D and Form I-765 instructions. To assist USCIS with reviewing your DACA request for acceptance, if you are filing a new initial DACA request because your DACA expired before Sept. 5, 2016, or because it was terminated at any time, please list the date your prior DACA expired or was terminated on Part 1 of the Form I-821D, if available.

The court’s preliminary injunction noted, among other things:

For the reasons DACA was instituted, and for the reasons tweeted by President Trump, this order finds that the public interest will be served by DACA’s continuation (on the conditions and exceptions set out below). Beginning March 5, absent an injunction, one thousand individuals per day, on average, will lose their DACA protection. The rescission will result in hundreds of thousands of individuals losing their work authorizations and deferred action status. This would tear authorized workers from our nation’s economy and would prejudice their being able to support themselves and their families, not to mention paying taxes to support our nation. Too, authorized workers will lose the benefit of their employer-provided healthcare plans and thus place a greater burden on emergency healthcare services.

On provisional relief motions, district judges must also weigh the balance of hardships flowing from a grant versus denial of provisional relief. The hardship to plaintiffs need not be repeated. The only hardship raised by defendants is interference with the agency’s judgment on how best to allocate its resources in keeping our homeland secure, as well as its judgment in phasing out DACA. Significantly, however, the agency’s judgment here was not based on a policy change. It was based on a mistake of law. If the instant order is correct that DACA fell within the statutory and constitutional powers of the Executive Branch, then a policy supported as high up as our Chief Executive has been the victim of a colossal blunder. A preliminary injunction will set that right without imposing any policy unwanted by the Executive Branch.

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