In a ruling on Saturday, a federal judge found that Chad Wolf was not legally serving as acting Homeland Security secretary when he signed the DACA rules limiting applications and renewals for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Those rules are now invalid. DACA is the program that started under the Obama administration and shields undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children from being deported.
Over the summer, Wolf issued a memo saying that new DACA applications would no longer be accepted, and renewals would go from two years to one year. Wolf’s appointment as secretary was never confirmed, so any policies that have been put into place under his tenure will continue to come under scrutiny. While Trump has successfully implemented other immigration limits, he hasn’t had much luck trying to dismantle this program. His administration tried to end the program in 2017 but was blocked by the US Supreme Court.
