A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled against a decade-old program that protects hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children, paving the way for more court action on the long-disputed policy.
A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit decided that the Department of Homeland Security does not have the authority to provide protections to those immigrants under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
The program, initially issued in 2012 under the Obama administration, offers deportation protections and work permits to more than 600,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. in 2007 or earlier when they were younger than 16.
