Jul 15, 2020
DACA was introduced by the Obama administration in June 2012 as a temporary program until Congress could pass a law that would provide a pathway to citizenship for foreign nationals who had been brought to the United States as young children and who had been living here without authorization ("Dreamers"). The program stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Since its introduction, DACA has been at the center of several hotly contested lawsuits. The legal battle recently enjoyed a victory at the US Supreme Court, which found that the Trump administration's decision to end the program in September 2017 was "arbitrary and capricious," which is legal speak for saying it didn't make any sense.
In this episode of Inside Immigration, Nadia Yakoob interviews a Dreamer about his experiences and a senior lawyer at the University of California who has been heavily involved in the litigation to preserve DACA to get a deeper understanding of DACA and all that it stands for.