The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals let stand a lower court decision that ordered the Biden Regime to stop approving new applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama Regime’s illegal Amnesty that permitted illegal-alien kids, brought to the United States “through no fault of their own,” to stay in the country. 

Pursuant to a lawsuit from nine states, a three-judge panel led by Bush 43 appointee Priscilla Richman, the chief judge, said DACA is illegal. It didn’t completely end the program, but did send the case back to a lower court.

BREAKING: TX wins big against lawless, open-borders Biden Admin at the 5th Circuit. The appeals court just AFFIRMED my team’s trial court win. DACA—part of Dems’ program to flood our country with aliens—is illegal & will stay enjoined. Huge victory for the Rule of Law in America! https://t.co/NmOYTfWXiY

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 6, 2022

“A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling that it agreed with the lower court that the implementation of DACA in 2012 was illegal—but it will keep the program in place while the lower court analyzes the latest rule the Biden administration implemented in an effort to save the program from future legal challenges,” as a report in the Texas Tribune explained:

Anticipating a loss in the appeals court, the Biden administration in August codified DACA into regulatory law and rescinded the 2012 memo by then-U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that originally created DACA. The legal move was aimed at countering the July 2021 lower court ruling by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Houston, who said the Obama administration had illegally implemented DACA.

[T]he defendants have not shown that there is a likelihood that they will succeed on the merits,” Chief Judge Priscilla Richman wrote in the ruling, adding, “We also recognize that DACA has had profound significance to recipients and many others in the ten years since its adoption.”

[DACA remains intact as appeals court sends case challenging its legality back to lower court in Texas, by Uriel J. Garcia, October 5, 2022]

Unhappily, the ruling won’t take DACA status away from those who have it, but it does stop new applications until the lower court can rule on it again.

The Fifth Circuit agreed that DACA trespasses the Administration Procedures Act that requires federal rules and regulations to undergo public comment. As well, the court ruled, Congress did not give the Department of Homeland Security the power to do what it did with DACA.

“DHS asserts that the program set forth in the DACA Memorandum is an exercise of its inherent prosecutorial discretion. The district court cogently and thoroughly analyzed this argument and rejected it, the ruling says. “We agree with the district court. As our court held in DAPA “‘[a]lthough prosecutorial discretion is broad, it is not ‘unfettered.’”

DAPA is Deferred Action for Parents, a program the court also struck down.

The Fifth Circuit continued:

The Government cites provisions that authorize the Secretary to “[e]stablish[] national immigration enforcement policies and priorities” and to carry out the administration and enforcement of immigration laws, including to “establish such regulations,” “issue such instructions,” and “perform such other acts as he deems necessary for carrying out his authority.” Writing about these same provisions in DAPA, we said that these “broad grants of authority … cannot reasonably be construed as assigning ‘decisions of vast economic and political significance’ … to an agency.” 

The defendants’ attempts to distinguish DACA and DAPA are unavailing.

The Historic American Nation has won a rare victory. Hope that DACA’s end is near.