Having DACA status is no longer an automatic blockade on being deported, the Board of Immigration Appeals has ruled, tossing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant “Dreamers” into a new and more complicated situation.
The BIA, a part of the Justice Department, ordered immigration judges to weigh all the factors in a deportation case, going beyond the mere fact that a migrant had been granted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
The BIA overturned a lower judge’s ruling that had considered DACA dispositive.
“The immigration judge erred in terminating removal proceedings based solely on the fact that the respondent has been accorded DACA protection and without considering the reasons for any opposition to termination,” wrote Roman Chaban, the appellate immigration judge who penned the BIA’s opinion in the case.
DACA, created by President Obama in 2012, has generally granted a deportation amnesty to illegal immigrants who qualified.
It was supposed to give leniency to young illegal immigrants at the time — dubbed “Dreamers” — who were working toward an education and had kept a relatively clean criminal record, allowing them a chance to deepen ties to society and compete for jobs.
At its peak, it protected about 800,000 people, and it still covers more than half a million. But it’s always been legally tenuous, both in terms of its creation and the extent of its protections.
Friday’s BIA ruling drew a denunciation from Sen. Richard J. Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee who has been a staunch advocate for Dreamers.
He called it “heartless” and said it should prompt Congress to pass legislation giving DACA recipients firmer legal standing.
“This is a matter of simple American fairness and justice,” he said.
The case the BIA ruled on involved Catalina Santiago-Santiago, whose arrest last August made headlines and sparked several legal battles.
Ms. Santiago came to the U.S. at age 8 and was part of the initial wave of DACA recipients in 2012. The status had been renewed every couple of years, with the most recent grant lasting through this month.
She argued — in both immigration court, which is part of the Justice Department, and in federal district court, which is part of the independent judiciary — that DACA was a bargain with the government that meant she wouldn’t be targeted for deportation as long as she complied with the program’s rules.
The immigration judge agreed and terminated her deportation case.
And the federal district judge ordered her released from immigration detention in October.
Friday’s decision overturns the immigration judge’s ruling and sends the case back for another review.
But the BIA took the additional step of assigning the case to a different immigration judge, suggesting the original jurist was tainted.
