WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Monday rejected a request from the Trump administration to speed up its consideration of the future of DACA, the federal program that has allowed 700,000 young people, known as Dreamers, to avoid deportation.
Short for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era initiative allows children of illegal immigrants to remain here if they were under 16 when their parents brought them to the U.S. and if they arrived by 2007.
The Trump administration, considering the program to be illegal, has tried for nearly two years to shut it down, but lower courts have blocked that effort. The administration’s appeals of those rulings have been pending since last November, but the Supreme Court has so far taken no action on them.
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Immigrant rights groups involved in the Maryland case urged the Supreme Court not to expedite the case. “No court to consider the issue has held that DACA is unlawful. Because there is no violation of federal law, there is and can be no harm” to the government in allowing the program to continue, they said.
For the first several months of the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security indicated it would not disturb DACA. But it later acted in support of a lawsuit filed by Texas and seven other states, which said the program illegally gives those it covers the right to seek work permits.
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