A third federal judge Tuesday rejected the Trump administration's reasoning for ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
In a scathing 60-page ruling, Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that administration moves to cancel DACA were "arbitrary" and "capricious" because DHS "failed adequately to explain its conclusion the program was unlawful."
The court gave the Trump administration 90 days to challenge the ruling before reinstating DACA in its entirety.
Bates joined judges in Brooklyn and San Francisco in ruling against the Trump administration.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced in February that it wouldn't immediately take up President Trump's appeal of a lower-court opinion keeping the DACA programs in place.
The dispute dates back to 2012, when then-president Barack Obama established the program without congressional action. The goal was to protect from deportation undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children, but many Republicans called it executive overreach and have remained opposed to the program.
Trump vowed to end the program on the campaign trail, but seemed to change his mind after winning election. He went back and forth over the future of DACA during his first months in office but made his decision in September: He announced that the program would end, but not until March 5, giving Congress six months to find a solution.
Democrats and Republicans have continued to squabble over the fate of those so-called DREAMers and failed to find a solution by Trump's stated March 5 deadline.
Democrats want the program left alone or made permanent through a new law; Republicans, with Trump's backing, have demanded other immigration enforcement and border security enhancements in exchange, including an expansion of the wall along the Mexican border.
The negotiations led to a three-day government shutdown in January as Democrats briefly demanded a DACA solution as part of a spending bill.
Once the Supreme Court decided not to fast-track the legal battle, the program continued to allow DACA recipients to renew their protections.
The justices could have agreed to hear the case this spring, leapfrogging a federal appeals court based in California that has been sympathetic to the cause of immigrants. They also could have overruled federal District Judge William Alsup without a hearing.
Instead, they simply allowed the case to run its normal course through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
"It is assumed that the Court of Appeals will proceed expeditiously to decide this case," the justices said in denying the Trump administration's petition. The case still could come to the high court in the future.
In his January ruling, Alsup granted a request by California, the University of California system, and several California cities to block Trump's decision to end the DACA program while their lawsuit challenging the program's termination plays out in court. He said those already approved for protection and work permits must be allowed to renew them before they expire.
Alsup said the challengers were likely to succeed by claiming that the Trump administration's decision to end the program was "arbitrary and capricious" and based on a flawed legal premise. He said the plaintiffs would be harmed, in part through economic disruptions and the loss of tax revenue caused by the DREAMers' change in status.
In March, federal District Judge Nicholas Garaufis issued a similar ruling in New York. He said the administration was wrong for several reasons, such as its premise that Obama's creation of the program was unconstitutional and illegal in the first place.
"Any of these flaws would support invalidating the DACA rescission as arbitrary and capricious," Garaufis ruled.
