The Biden administration appealed on Friday a court ruling that found the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to be unlawful, barring first-time applications and putting thousands of undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation.
The U.S. Justice Department filed the appeal in response to U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen’s ruling in July that DACA was illegal, ordering the government to stop accepting new applications to the program while a Texas-led lawsuit wound its way through the courts.
The Obama-era program, established in 2012, protects from deportation certain young people who were brought to the United States as children.
The more than 600,000 people already enrolled in the program were not affected by the ruling.
For more information, read our in-depth guide on the DACA program.