Since President Barack Obama signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order in 2012, nearly 826,000 people have been accepted into the program. The policy was meant to protect unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the US as minors – known as "Dreamers" – from deportation.
In April 2018, President Donald Trump tried to shutter the program. However, the dissolution of DACA was put on hold, pending legal disputes. On June 18, 2020, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California which held that the Trump administration’s effort to end DACA was “arbitrary and capricious” and blocked the policy change. The decision did not weigh in on the merits of DACA; rather, it found that the administration violated the Administrative Procedures Act by failing to sufficiently justify its decision to end DACA.
