DACA Renewals Continue as Congress, Courts Tussle Over Deadlines, Policy

DACA Renewals Continue as Congress, Courts Tussle Over Deadlines, Policy

By Farida Jhabvala Romero FEBRUARY 21, 2018

Even though Congress has failed to act so far on immigration legislation, President Trump’s administration continues to handle a rush of applications to renew a permit that allows nearly 700,000 young undocumented immigrants to legally work and be protected from deportation.

Trump issued a March 5 deadline to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. But observers expect the program to continue well beyond that date as the issue is tied up in the courts.

Last week, a federal judge in New York joined the January ruling of a San Francisco-based judge who temporarily halted the Trump administration’s phase-out of DACA while lawsuits are pending. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to resume accepting applications to renew the permits of current DACA recipients.

That opened a window of opportunity for Jackie Narvaez, 28, whose DACA status expires this summer. The math and science middle school teacher in East Oakland worries about losing her job and potential deportation unless protections are extended. She sent her renewal application by certified mail last month.

“You have to make sure it’s being tracked. Make sure it’s safe,” said Narvaez, who grew up in Los Angeles. “Then it was just like, OK let’s hope for the best.”

Immigration officials declined to report how many applications they have received and approved since the agency announced it was complying with the federal court’s order on Jan. 13.

But according to reports from nonprofit advocacy organizations in California, such as Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland and Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, more than a thousand people in the state have filed for renewals over the last month.

Mission Asset Fund, based in San Francisco, provided more than 2,600 scholarships nationwide to cover the fee for DACA renewals and has run out of funds for that purpose, according to Kelsea McDonough, a spokeswoman for the organization.

Nursing student Karla Lopez attended a legal clinic at the Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network, or SIREN, in San Jose to have her application reviewed by an attorney before sending it in.

Lopez was willing to pay out of pocket the nearly $500 application fee even though her DACA permit doesn’t expire until November.

“I’d rather be safe than sorry. Do it before anything changes,” said Lopez, 25, adding that it has been very stressful to watch the immigration debate in Washington, D.C. “It’s been honestly scary.

Like, I thought this was going to be my last year here.”

For most DACA recipients, there is no added risk in applying now since the federal government already has their personal information, said attorney Shouan Riahi with SIREN.

“This window might close and the kids might lose that money,” said Riahi, referring to the application fee. “At the same time, it might not. And they might get two extra years of work authorization and reprieve from deportation. And I think the $500 is likely worth it.”

He added that SIREN’s legal clinics have been flooded by a “huge demand” from DACA recipients ready to reapply. The organization also offers scholarships to cover the fee.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to announce in the coming days whether they will take up a review of Judge Alsup’s decision. The Department of Justice took the rare step of simultaneously petitioning the high court to intervene, while appealing to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as well.

Either way, a ruling could take months, said Jeffrey Davidson, a lead attorney suing the Trump administration on behalf of the University of California to reinstate DACA.

“The administration cannot rescind DACA and cannot remove people who have current DACA status” as long as Judge Alsup’s order is in place, Davidson said.

Federal immigration authorities are expected to report to the district court in San Francisco the progress they’ve made in renewing DACA applications.

Oakland teacher Jackie Narvaez said she has already received a government notice in the mail that her request is being processed.

“So happy, I screenshot it,” Narvaez said. “I sent it to my boyfriend, to my mom, I said look, I already got my receipt!”

She will be happier still, she said, once she actually holds her renewed DACA permit, bringing her more certainty that she will be able to teach two more years.

https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2018/02/21...dlines-policy/

Extremely vet each and every renewal.

All liars and criminals need to be deported on the spot!

Any of them that took government benefits, stole identities need to be booted out.

Let them tussle. The primary solution to illegal immigration will come from deportations of every single illegal alien in the country, not because they're MS-13, not because they're a rapist, not because they're crooks, cheats, robbers, drunks, drug runners, terrorists, etc., etc., etc., but for the simple well-defined quickly verified fact of being an illegal alien.

Everyone involved in trying to fix this problem for US needs to focus on the actual simplicity of the issue which is: illegal immigration is caused by illegal aliens and deportation is not a punishment, it's a correction to your being in the wrong country. It doesn't matter how good or bad, how poor or rich, whether you came here illegally or came here legally and overstayed a visa or violated a green card that was revoked, it doesn't matter if you have relatives or family here, it doesn't matter if you found a cure for cancer, the only thing that matters is that you're in the wrong country which makes you an illegal alien which requires deportation and removal to correct your location.

Illegal immigration is illegal because of all the complex, expensive, unfair, harmful, debilitating and yes often fatal consequences on the American people. Those are why we have the laws to prevent unauthorized entry into the US to begin with and correct it when it occurs. But in enforcement of our laws, none of that matters, all that matters is that you're in the wrong country and require a correction to put your ass back into the country where it belongs.

I do not remember the specifics, but judges have been forced to resign for handing down rulings and, or, making statements that were considered politically incorrect because of howling against them by the organized left.

We have radical leftists hacks pretending to be judges. We need to start forcing them to resign from the bench and end abuses of judicial power used to promote the hard left political agenda. Time and time again the liberals in the courts have nullified the hard work and the will of the people trying to stop illegal immigration. Somebody needs to start an organized effort to force leftists judges to resign or have them removed from the bench. And we need to drag the politicians, kicking and screaming, like Trump, to ignore illegal judicial rulings and abuses of power.

Obama ignored court rulings and abused executive powers. I am tired of our side always being made to abide strictly to rules and the laws while the left can do what the hell ever it wants with impunity'.

United States federal judge
. . .
Tenure and salary[edit]

"Article III federal judges" (as opposed to judges of some courts with special jurisdictions) serve "during good behavior" (often paraphrased as appointed "for life").

Judges hold their seats until they resign, die, or are removed from office. Although the legal orthodoxy is that judges cannot be removed from office except by impeachment by the House of Representatives followed by conviction by the Senate, several legal scholars, including William Rehnquist, Saikrishna Prakash, and Steven D. Smith, have argued that the Good Behaviour Clause may, in theory, permit removal by way of a writ of scire facias filed before a federal court, without resort to impeachment.^[1]

Since the impeachment process requires a trial by the United States Senate, and since the constitutional provision concerning federal judges' tenure cannot be changed without the ratifications of three-fourths of the states, federal judges have perhaps the best job security available in the United States.

Moreover, the Constitution forbids Congress to diminish a federal judge's salary. Twentieth-century experience suggests that Congress is generally unwilling to take time out of its busy schedule to impeach and try a federal judge until, after criminal conviction, he or she is already in prison and still drawing a salary, which cannot otherwise be taken away (see Nixon v. United States, a key Supreme Court case about Congress's discretion in impeaching and trying federal judges).

As of 2015, federal district judges are paid $201,100 a year, circuit judges $213,300, Associate Justices of the Supreme Court $246,800 and the Chief Justice of the United States $258,100. All were permitted to earn a maximum of an additional $21,000 a year for teaching.^[2]

Chief Justice John Roberts has repeatedly pleaded for an increase in judicial pay, calling the situation "a constitutional crisis that threatens to undermine the strength and independence of the federal judiciary".^[3]

The problem is that the most talented associates at the largest U.S. law firms with judicial clerkship experience (in other words, the attorneys most qualified to become the next generation of federal judges) already earn as much as a federal judge in their first year as full-time associates.^[4] Thus, when those attorneys eventually become experienced partners and reach the stage in life where one would normally consider switching to public service, their interest in joining the judiciary is tempered by the prospect of a giant pay cut back to what they were making 10 to 20 years earlier (adjusted for inflation). One way for attorneys to soften the financial blow is to spend only a few years on the bench and then return to private practice or go into private arbitration, but such turnover creates a risk of a revolving door judiciary subject to regulatory capture.

Thus, Chief Justice Roberts has warned that "judges are no longer drawn primarily from among the best lawyers in the practicing bar" and "If judicial appointment ceases to be the capstone of a distinguished career and instead becomes a stepping stone to a lucrative position in private practice, the Framers' goal of a truly independent judiciary will be placed in serious jeopardy."<sup>[3] . . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United..._federal_judge</sup>

DACA Renewals are still being accepted and processed.

Trump said ‘DACA is dead,’ but he has approved 55,000 applications just this year