SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The Trump administration will try to convince a U.S. appeals court Tuesday that it was justified in ending an Obama-era immigration policy that shielded hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will be the first federal appeals court to hear arguments about President Donald Trump’s decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
DACA has protected some 700,000 people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children or came with families that overstayed visas.
A federal judge in San Francisco in January blocked the Trump administration’s decision to end DACA, reinstating the program in a decision that applied nationwide.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup rejected the argument that President Barack Obama exceeded his power in implementing DACA and said the Trump administration failed to consider the disruption that ending the program would cause.