President Trump hasn't ended it, but the federal courts likely will. DACA--the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program--is on shaky ground as it faces a 10-state legal challenge led by Texas. The program, created by executive order under President Obama, allows younger illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children to remain in the country and receive work permits. But Texas and nine other states have challenged it in federal court as unconstitutional, arguing the President does not have the authority to arbitrarily change federal immigration law.
The federal court challenge to DACA is likely to play out in the next few months, after President Trump surprised many of his supporters by deciding to keep DACA in place earlier this year, despite previously pledging to end it on the campaign trail. Texas and the other states challenging the program have urged the Trump Administration to end it. Jessica Vaughan with the Center for Immigration Studies was stunned at Trump's move on DACA. "It's one thing to renew (work permits) for the people who got them under the Obama Administration until some kind of solution can be worked out, but it's quite a different thing to keep issuing them to new people who did not have them before," she tells KTRH.
Vaughan also agrees with other legal experts who believe the courts will strike down DACA on Constitutional grounds, much like what they did with Obama's similar DAPA program, which provided amnesty to parents of U.S.-born children. "It's pretty clear that it is an abuse of the President's authority to keep issuing work permits under this program," she says. "I don't blame Texas and the other states that have joined this lawsuit in trying to force (Trump's) hand one way or the other...after all, DAPA was found to be likely unconstitutional."