Judge May Add 1 Million Migrants to the DACA Work Permit Program

WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 5: Demonstrators march during a demonstration in response to th
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Neil Munro

A federal judge is hinting he will add another one million illegal migrants to the work permit and amnesty program created by President Barack Obama in 2012.

On Saturday, New York federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis struck down President Donald Trump’s July curbs on Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The judge said he blocked the July curbs because they were signed by Trump’s deputy, Chad Wolf, whom he deemed improperly appointed to the job.

The judge also invited the lawyers to submit “motions for relief [benefits] in light of the court’s decision.” The lawyers will ask the judge to add the one million illegals to Obama’s giveaway of work permits, Social Security numbers, and residency approvals.

Wolf was designated as the Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in November 2019. So far, he has not been confirmed by the Senate. Wolf signed the curbs after a series of lower court judges — and then the U.S. Supreme Court decided in June — that Trump’s 2017 cancellation of the work permit program was legal but insufficiently justified.

The curbs signed by Wolf barred the acceptance of new illegals and also trimmed the duration of work permits held by the migrants, nearly all of whom were brought to the county by illegal-migrant parents.

If higher judges uphold the win by the lawyers at the Justice Action Center, more than one million younger illegals could get work permits via the 2012 DACA rule — even though millions of Americans now lack jobs or must work for low wages amid a flood of legal immigrant and illegal migrant labor.

The decision was touted by Mark Zuckerberg’s advocacy group, FWD.us, which was created in 2013 to help pass the “Gang of Eight” amnesty and cheap labor bill.

Trump’s lawyers will likely appeal the new legal decision, which dodged the issue of whether any president has the authority to award work permits without direct approval from Congress.

A DHS statement said that Wolf has been properly appointed to the acting DHS job, and said:

Garaufis’ ruling is another example of an activist judge substituting his own policy preference for those of the Trump Administration. His reasoning has already been thoroughly discredited, and his unwillingness to seriously engage on the facts or the law is disappointing. DHS is exploring its options to ensure its review of DACA continues as intended.

If Trump’s recent curbs are struck down, he can reissue the same DACA curbs under his direct authority — or else the judge may apply Obama’s 2012 rules to the extra one million migrants.

Roughly 650,000 illegals now hold work permits under the program,

At least 30,000 additional DACA beneficiaries have managed to gain green cards via their program.

At least 300,000 additional children and youths have come across the southern border since 2011, including many who were admitted by Obama’s policy of loosening border controls. Trump, in contrast, blocked the inflow in early 2020.

Obama’s offer of work permits applied to illegal migrants who arrived before they turned 16 and yet are younger than 30, have lived in the United States for at least five years, have graduated from Americans’ high-schools, and have not been “convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor offense, multiple misdemeanor offenses, or otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.”

Joe Biden has promised to continue the DACA program.

The DACA program has been bitterly defended by progressives and by business groups, such as the FWD.us group of investors, partly because the program helps Democrats protect the growing population of illegal immigrants in the United States. The furor over the program also keeps media reporters from spotlighting other aspects of the nation’s cheap-labor economic policies, such as the resident population of at least 1.3 million white-collar visa workers.

The Justice Action Center lawyers are touted by FWD.us.

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