But critics of the president’s decision to end the policy, including several states and organizations, had already sued the administration, saying that shutting down the program was arbitrary and done without following the proper legal procedures.

One of the lead plaintiffs in the case, Janet Napolitano, is currently the president of the sprawling University of California system of colleges but served as the secretary of homeland security for Mr. Obama in 2012 and was an architect of the DACA program.

In his ruling, Judge Alsup questioned the administration’s contention that the DACA program had not been put into place legally. He asserted that the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has long had the authority to grant the kind of temporary protections that formed the basis of the program.

Judge Alsup also cited several of Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts that expressed support for the program. He noted that in September, the president wrote: “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!” Such tweets, the judge said, bolstered the idea that keeping the program going was in the public’s interest.</s>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday night temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s decision to end a program protecting young immigrants from deportation.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted a request by California and other plaintiffs to prevent President Donald Trump from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program while their lawsuits play out in court.

Alsup said lawyers in favor of DACA clearly demonstrated that the young immigrants “were likely to suffer serious, irreparable harm” without court action. The judge also said the lawyers have a strong chance of succeeding at trial.

DACA has protected about 800,000 people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children or came with families who overstayed visas. The program includes hundreds of thousands of college-age students.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in September that the program would be phased out, saying former President Barack Obama had exceeded his authority when he implemented it in 2012.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice said the judge’s decision doesn’t change the fact that the program was an illegal circumvention of Congress, and it is within the agency’s power to end it.

“The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend this position, and looks forward to vindicating its position in further litigation,” department spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement.

Alsup considered five separate lawsuits filed in Northern California, including one by the California and three other states, and another by the governing board of the University of California school system.

“DACA covers a class of immigrants whose presence, seemingly all agree, pose the least, if any, threat and allows them to sign up for honest labor on the condition of continued good behavior,” Alsup wrote in his decision. “This has become an important program for DACA recipients and their families, for the employers who hire them, for our tax treasuries, and for our economy.”

That echoed the judge’s comments from a court hearing on Dec. 20, when he grilled an attorney for the Department of Justice over the government’s justification for ending DACA, saying many people had come to rely on it and faced a “real” and “palpable” hardship from its loss.

Alsup also questioned whether the administration had conducted a thorough review before ending the program.

Brad Rosenberg, a Justice Department attorney, said the administration considered the effects of ending DACA and decided to phase it out over time instead of cutting it immediately.

DACA recipients will be allowed to stay in the U.S. for the remainder of their two-year authorizations. Any recipient whose status was due to expire within six months also got a month to apply for another two-year term.

The Justice Department said in court documents that DACA was facing the possibility of an abrupt end by court order, but Alsup was critical of that argument.

People took out loans, enrolled in school and even made decisions about whether to get married and start families on the basis of DACA and now face “horrific” consequences from the loss of the program, said Jeffrey Davidson, an attorney for the University of California governing board.

“The government considered none of this at all when they decided to rescind DACA,” he said at the hearing.

The University of California said in a statement after the decision that “UC’s DACA students represent the very best of our country and are a key part of California and our nation’s future.”

The statement says the UC system will persist in legal challenges to the end of the program and will seek permanent protection for the young immigrants.

DACA recipients are commonly referred to as “dreamers,” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act that would have provided similar protections for young immigrants.

“Dreamers lives were thrown into chaos when the Trump administration tried to terminate the DACA program without obeying the law,” California Attorney General Becerra said in a statement after Tuesday’s decision. “Tonight’s ruling is a huge step in the right direction.”</s>"It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts," Trump said in a Twitter message.

A similar indignation to the court decision was expressed by White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who considers a US district court's decision to block the Trump administration "outrageous."

"We find this decision to be outrageous, especially in light of the President’s successful bipartisan meeting with House and Senate members at the White House on the same day," Sanders said.

The resentment is connected with the US District Judge William Alsup's decision, announced on January 10, to prevent Trump's administration from revoking the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation. As the judge specified, all those who had DACA status since September 5, 2017, when the US president declared his resolution on the program, could renew it while a lawsuit was pending.

READ MORE: US Judge Blocks Trump's Decision to Rescind DACA Immigration Program — Reports

Trump's move on DACA has been delayed for half a year for the US authorities to close pending applications and renewals, as well as give the US Congress an opportunity to pass legislation to replace it. Thus, people protected under DACA have not been able to renew their permits since March.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an executive order issued by former US President Barack Obama in 2012, granted temporary work and residency rights to so-called "dreamers"- people who entered the United State illegally as juveniles.</s>A federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday to keep in place the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children from deportation and allows them to work legally, while a lawsuit proceeds.

The order, signed by U.S. District Judge Williams Alsup, marks a major triumph for immigrant rights groups who have rallied around the program that benefits nearly 700,000 people.

The preliminary injunction on Trump’s cancellation of DACA requires the Department of Homeland Security “to maintain the DACA program on a nationwide basis on the same terms and conditions as were in effect before the rescission on September 5, 2017” ― including allowing those who already benefit from DACA to apply to renew their status.

The order does not, however, allow people who have never held DACA protections to apply as new applicants.

“Dreamers’ lives were thrown into chaos when the Trump administration tried to terminate the DACA program without obeying the law,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said in a statement. “Today’s ruling is a huge step in the right direction.

The Trump administration “looks forward to vindicating its position in further litigation,” Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement.

“Tonight’s order doesn’t change the Department of Justice’s position on the facts,” the statement said. “DACA was implemented unilaterally after Congress declined to extend these benefits to this same group of illegal aliens.”

Before the order, the program was scheduled to begin phasing out on March 5.

Alsup is presiding over five lawsuits challenging the legality of Trump’s termination of DACA that were consolidated into one in the Northern District of California. The state of California, the Regents of the University of California, the city of San José and several DACA recipients are among those suing in an attempt to preserve the program.

The lawsuits argue that the White House flouted the process for terminating the program in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and that the cancellation was based on flawed legal logic.

The Obama administration used executive action to create the DACA program in 2012, allowing undocumented immigrants who arrived as children or young teenagers to apply to work legally in the country and avoid deportation for a renewable two-year period.

The Trump administration announced in September, however, that it would cancel the program, citing a threat from a coalition of 10 states, led by Texas, to challenge the program’s constitutionality.</s>A federal judge in California blocked President Trump’s planned phaseout of the Obama-era DACA deportation amnesty in a ruling late Tuesday that could upend the negotiations on Capitol Hill over “Dreamers” future.

Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee to the bench, ruled the DACA program legal — the first court to do so — and said the administration illegally cut corners in canceling it.

He ordered the administration to allow illegal immigrants to renew their DACA applications just as they would have under President Obama.

“The agency shall post reasonable public notice that it will resume receiving DACA renewal applications and prescribe a process consistent with this order,” the judge said.

The ruling is a major victory for immigrant-rights groups who had challenged Mr. Trump’s phaseout.

One of those challengers was former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who created the DACA program in 2012, without going through the full notice-and-comment period. Ms. Napolitano said that while her action was legal, canceling DACA without notice-and-comment was not legal.

Judge Alsup agreed with Ms. Napolitano, who sued in her new role as president of the University of California system, along with the state of California and several other challengers.

The judge, in his ruling, said the 2012 DACA program, while not approved by any law, appeared to be supported by years of practice in administrations of both parties.

“In extending programmatic deferred action to DACA enrollees, the agency acted within the scope of this long and recognized practice,” the judge said.

The ruling contradicts other federal judges, including the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rules a program similar to DACA was illegal because it not only didn’t go through notice-and-comment, but it also was contrary to immigration law.

Judge Alsup said the DACA case was different enough that he didn’t feel bound by that logic, and he blasted the Trump administration for caving to legal threats from Texas and other states opposed to DACA based on that circuit’s ruling.

Mr. Trump and his aides had concluded the program was illegal and ordered a six-month phaseout, concluding March 5.

In a series of Tweets, he said the 5th Circuit’s ruling on the broader 2014 Obama immigration amnesty was based heavily on the operations of DACA.

“The upshot is that because the Trump Administration understood executive power in a more narrow fashion than did the Obama administration, the former acted arbitrarily and capricious. I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s decision to phase out DACA set off a scramble on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and Republicans began to search for a more permanent solution for nearly 700,000 people still protected by the DACA program.

Those conversations came to a head Tuesday when Mr. Trump convened a meeting at the White House with Democrats and Republicans. Both sides agreed to try to reach an agreement, with Democrats insisting a speedy resolution was needed to beat Mr. Trump’s phaseout.

If Judge Alsup’s ruling stands, it could eliminate the need for speed, upending those negotiations.

Judge Alsup did allow some exceptions to his ruling reinstating DACA. While current and past recipients could apply for renewal, he said no people who hadn’t applied for DACA before could join now.

DACA recipients can also still be deported if the government has good reason, the judge said.

And he said the government doesn’t have to continue issuing “advance parole” to DACA recipients. Many of those recipients had used the advance parole system as a backdoor pathway to citizenship under Mr. Obama.</s>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday night temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s decision to end a program protecting young immigrants from deportation.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted a request by California and other plaintiffs to prevent President Donald Trump from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program while their lawsuits play out in court.

Alsup said lawyers in favor of DACA clearly demonstrated that the young immigrants “were likely to suffer serious, irreparable harm” without court action. The judge also said the lawyers have a strong chance of succeeding at trial.

DACA has protected about 800,000 people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children or came with families who overstayed visas. The program includes hundreds of thousands of college-age students.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in September that the program would be phased out, saying former President Barack Obama had exceeded his authority when he implemented it in 2012.

Alsup considered five separate lawsuits filed in Northern California, including one by the state and another by the governing board of the University of California school system.

During a court hearing on Dec. 20, the judge grilled an attorney for the Department of Justice over the government’s justification for ending DACA, saying many people had come to rely on it and faced a “real” and “palpable” hardship from its loss.

Alsup also questioned whether the administration had conducted a thorough review before ending the program.

Brad Rosenberg, a Justice Department attorney, said the administration considered the effects of ending DACA and decided to phase it out over time instead of cutting it immediately.

DACA recipients will be allowed to stay in the U.S. for the remainder of their two-year authorizations. Any recipient whose status was due to expire within six months also got a month to apply for another two-year term.

The Justice Department said in court documents that DACA was facing the possibility of an abrupt end by court order, but Alsup was critical of that argument.

People took out loans, enrolled in school and even made decisions about whether to get married and start families on the basis of DACA and now face “horrific” consequences from the loss of the program, said Jeffrey Davidson, an attorney for the University of California governing board.

“The government considered none of this at all when they decided to rescind DACA,” he said at the hearing.

DACA recipients are commonly referred to as “dreamers,” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act that would have provided similar protections for young immigrants.</s>A federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to maintain the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program late Tuesday, an Obama-era amnesty policy that extends legal status to 800,000 illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children.

The ruling could ensure DACA’s security as President Donald Trump attempts to reach an immigration deal with Democratic lawmakers. The program was scheduled to phase out in March.

“Tonight’s order doesn’t change the Department of Justice’s position on the facts: DACA was implemented unilaterally after Congress declined to extend these benefits to this same group of illegal aliens,” said Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley. “As such, it was an unlawful circumvention of Congress, and was susceptible to the same legal challenges that effectively ended DACA.”

“The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend this position, and looks forward to vindicating its position in further litigation,” he added.

TRENDING: LiAngelo Ball Tells Truth About The Day He Said ‘Thank You’ To President

The administration justified DACA’s termination on separation of powers grounds, arguing only Congress could authorize such a program.

Alsup strongly rejected this view, pointing to a 2014 Justice Department memo purporting to show that DACA’s features are rooted in Supreme Court case law or related powers granted by Congress.

Since Alsup concluded the program’s rescission was based on a flawed legal premise, he said the action was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, (and) otherwise not in accordance with law.”

Alsup further noted that Trump himself has determined DACA serves the public interest, citing two September 2017 tweets in which the president expressed support for so-called “Dreamers.”

“We seem to be in the unusual position wherein the ultimate authority over the agency, the chief executive, publicly favors the very program the agency has ended,” the judge wrote.

The order does not require the administration to process new DACA applications and allows law enforcement to remove any DACA recipient believed to pose a threat to national security or public safety.

RELATED: Matt Drudge Just Revealed How Much The Trump Wall Would Really Cost America

The Trump administration can ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review Alsup’s decision.

The Supreme Court recently lifted a sweeping discovery order Alsup issued in the DACA litigation. The judge ordered the Trump administration to release all internal documents relating to the program’s cancellation, despite the government’s insistence that any such records were privileged. The justices concluded that Alsup’s order was overly broad, and ordered him to reconsider the administration’s arguments.

The University of California system brought the suit challenging DACA’s termination. The system is led by Janet Napolitano, the former secretary of Homeland Security who presided over DACA’s original promulgation during the Obama administration.

The ruling can be viewed here.

A version of this article previously appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.</s>In a victory for Dreamers nationwide, a San Francisco judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration’s rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, ordering the administration to resume accepting DACA applications as the underlying case continues in federal court.

The district court ruling granted California Attorney General Xavier Becerra a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration over its Sept. 5 decision to end the program, ramping up a heated debate over the fate of 800,000 young, undocumented immigrants. Becerra — joined by the attorney generals for Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota; the University of California; Santa Clara County; the city of San Jose, individual Dreamers and other plaintiffs — filed a lawsuit against the administration in November, arguing that ending the program caused irreparable harm to DACA recipients and the states in which they live.

“Dreamers’ lives were thrown into chaos when the Trump administration tried to terminate the DACA program without obeying the law,” Becerra said in a statement Tuesday. “Tonight’s ruling is a huge step in the right direction. America is and has been home to Dreamers who courageously came forward, applied for DACA and did everything the federal government asked of them. They followed DACA’s rules, they succeeded in school, at work and in business, and they have contributed in building a better America. We will fight at every turn for their rights and opportunities so they may continue to contribute to America.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Trump announced the end of the program on Sept. 5 and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services stopped taking renewal applications in early October. Congress has until March 5 to salvage the Obama-era program and protect an estimated 800,000 undocumented immigrants who grew up in the U.S. from deportation.

Tuesday’s decision is the latest in a monthslong battle surrounding DACA, one that has pitted Democrats in Congress against Republican lawmakers who say the program is an overreach of power.</s>A federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction Tuesday night blocking the Trump administration from dismantling the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects immigrants brought to the U.S. at a young age from deportation.

The judge, William Alsup of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, ruled that the Trump administration must allow the nearly 690,000 Dreamers to continue to renew their protections while the legal challenge worked its way through court. The administration would not be required to accept new applications.

Under the administration’s decision announced in September, the Department of Homeland Security would stop accepting applications after Oct. 5, and permits that expired after March 5 would not be renewed.

According to NBC News, Alsup chastised DHS for failing to present any analysis of the damage its order would do to the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers in the country, and he called the government’s argument that the DHS does not and did not have the right to run the program “arbitrary” and “capricious.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said Tuesday after the ruling that the agency still believes it has the power to end the program, which it considers illegal overreach by the previous administration, according to the Associated Press.

Alsup’s ruling came as he considered five lawsuits filed in Northern California. One of the lawsuits was filed by four states, including California, and another was filed by the University of California system, according to the AP.

President Obama created DACA in 2012, and many Republicans have argued since then that the action was unconstitutional. Donald Trump has previously expressed public support for the program in tweets—tweets Alsip cited in his decision, according to the New York Times.

The ruling came the same day as a bipartisan meeting in which Trump and members of Congress sought to work out an immigration deal to decide the fate of the Dreamers. Republicans and Democrats remain divided on the issue, and very little was actually accomplished.

The administration could appeal the ruling, meaning it is possible for the program could still be phased out as scheduled.

You depend on Slate for sharp, distinctive coverage of the latest developments in politics and culture. Now we need to ask for your support. Our work is more urgent than ever and is reaching more readers—but online advertising revenues don’t fully cover our costs, and we don’t have print subscribers to help keep us afloat. So we need your help. If you think Slate’s work matters, become a Slate Plus member. You’ll get exclusive members-only content and a suite of great benefits—and you’ll help secure Slate’s future. Join Slate Plus</s>A federal judge Tuesday night temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to end the program that shields from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the country illegally as children.

The ruling marks a potentially major shift in the heated political battle over the fate of the so-called Dreamers, which has created a months-long deadlock in Congress.

With his decision, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco granted a request by California and other states to stop the administration from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, at least until lawsuits can play out in court.

Under DACA, which was created by President Obama, about 800,000 young people who came to the U.S. illegally as children have been allowed to live and work legally in the U.S.

In September, with Trump under pressure from officials in several states opposed to DACA, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions said the administration would begin winding down the program on March 5. The decision was based on Sessions’ opinion that Obama had gone beyond his legal authority in setting up DACA.

That legal opinion was incorrect, the judge said, calling it “a flawed legal premise.” He cited decades of previous actions by immigration authorities to provide temporary relief to groups of people who had violated immigration law.

"DACA was and remains a lawful exercise of authority" by immigration officials, wrote Alsup, an appointee of President Clinton.

Because the decision to abandon the program was based on Sessions’ incorrect reading of the law, it “must be set aside,” he wrote.

“In terminating DACA,” the administration “failed to address the 689,800 young people who had come to rely on DACA to live and to work in this country. These individuals had submitted substantial personal identifying information to the government, paid hefty fees, and planned their lives according to the dictates of DACA,” the judge wrote.

The DACA recipients would suffer irreparable harm if the program is allowed to end, he added, saying the move “would tear authorized workers from our nation’s economy and would prejudice their being able to support themselves and their families, not to mention paying taxes to support our nation.”

“Tonight’s ruling is a huge step in the right direction,” said California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, who helped orchestrate the legal challenge. “America is and has been home to Dreamers who courageously came forward, applied for DACA and did everything the federal government asked of them.”

In a statement, Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley said the judge’s “order doesn’t change the Department of Justice’s position on the facts: DACA was implemented unilaterally after Congress declined to extend these benefits to this same group of illegal aliens…. The Department of Homeland Security therefore acted within its lawful authority in deciding to wind down DACA in an orderly manner.”

Justice Department officials, O’Malley said, would “continue to vigorously defend this position.”

Alsup ordered the administration to start processing applications for renewal of DACA permits and to continue existing ones, maintaining the status quo for all people enrolled in the program at the time of Sessions’ announcement.

“I am still shaking,” said Jirayut “New” Latthivongskorn, one of the handful of Dreamers named as plaintiffs in the case, who had stopped doing his homework to comb through the court ruling as soon as he heard the news.

Latthivongskorn, now 28, came to San Francisco with his parents from Thailand when he was 9. His family struggled to obtain citizenship and was scammed by a lawyer, he said, obscuring their path to legal status. He is now a medical student at UC San Francisco and completing a dual master’s program at Harvard University.

“The key part of this is that we don’t let this ruling be seen in a way as an excuse for Congress not to act,” he said. “There is no less of an urgency to pass a legislative solution.”

The ruling comes as Congress is struggling over how to deal with the fate of the Dreamers as Democrats have balked at signals from Trump and Republicans in Congress that a deal on DACA must tied to a slew of hard-line reforms on immigration.

Trump convened 20 lawmakers at the White House on Tuesday to discuss DACA and broader immigration reform, but the freewheeling hour-long session did not result in an immediate deal. Instead, Republican and Democratic leaders agreed to meet in days ahead to develop a timeline for producing legislation. But hopes for action this month have dimmed because of the political divisions over the issue.

Trump, himself, has appeared torn over the program. He has repeatedly said that he does not think that the Dreamers should be deported. At the same time, he has faced opposition from his conservative supporters to any steps that appear to involve “amnesty.”

The administration’s lack of clear direction has left Republican members of Congress stymied.

Rubin reported from Los Angeles, Ulloa from Sacramento and Mascaro from Washington.

11:25 p.m.: The story was updated with reaction to the decision.

9:20 p.m.: The story was updated with additional details on the judge’s ruling and background.

The story was first published at 8:20 p.m.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California issues a nationwide injunction blocking the rescission of the DACA program, ordering the Trump administration to restart and maintain the program as the legal challenge(s) to the president's decision go forward.