DACA Restored

Under an order filed December 4, 2020, Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn instructed the Department of Homeland Security to begin accepting new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program as soon as Monday, December 7, 2020.  The court ruled that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Chad Wolf was not lawfully appointed, invalidating his July 2020 memo that altered DACA renewal periods from two years to one year, placed restrictions on advance parole requests and instructed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to reject all first-time DACA applications.  This news will likely open DACA to first-time applicants and renewals as well as enable current DACA recipients to request permission to leave the US temporarily and safely re-enter (to visit family or loved ones, many of whom they haven't been able to see for a decade or more).

DACA currently protects about 640,000 undocumented young immigrants. As of July, an estimated 300,000 young people living in the U.S. are eligible for the program that have not yet been able to apply. That includes 55,000 who have aged into eligibility over the last three years.

Marillac Mission Fund grantees, The Migrant and Immigrant Community Action (MICA) Project and The St. Louis Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America (IFCLA), along with others, have been following this news and are working to help first-time and renewal applicants complete their applications befor December 22, 2020.

For more information, you may read this article.