The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the legal immigration branch of the Department of Homeland Security, recently admitted before a judge that the department had approved DACA applications after a Federal Judge ruled that the Biden Administration must stop accepting new DACA requests.
According to Tracy Renaud, Acting Director of USCIS at the time, now Acting Deputy Director, two new DACA applications were approved as renewals; Renaud stated that these applications were, in fact, new and not being renewed - a direct violation of Judge Andrew Hanen’s July ruling.
Additionally, nine other new applications were fully processed in late July, bringing the total new applications processed to eleven since the Federal Government was barred from accepting new applications.
Tracy Renaud also stated that USCIS had advanced more than 600 new DACA applications since the ruling by Judge Hanen. However, Renaud reaffirmed to the judge that none of those 600 applications were ultimately approved.
Justice Department lawyer James J. Walker said in a court filing accompanying Ms. Renaud’s declaration:
Moreover, in the limited number of instances where noncitizens have had their initial DACA requests inadvertently granted, USCIS has taken immediate corrective actions.
DACA grants illegal alien “Dreamers” an amnesty from deportation and awards them work permits to compete for American jobs, further loosening the labor market. The program was created by executive order under Obama, an over-exertion of power that violated the Administrative Procedures Act according to Judge Hanen.
Rob Law, former chief of the office of planning and strategy at USCIS, stated:
If USCIS adjudicators are even looking at these initial requests, the system is flawed, and/or the political leadership is ordering them to violate the order.
According to the Washington Times, this is not the first time the agency has faced this kind of situation. A similar issue occurred in 2015 as USCIS willfully broke another ruling by Judge Hanen issuing 2,600 three-year amnesty permits despite a national injunction.
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