By Mersedes Cervantes and Olivia Richard
PHOENIX – The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Saturday night it would continue accepting requests to renew the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The announcement came after a federal judge in California issued an injunction ordering the Trump administration to continue receiving applications to renew the program, know by its initials DACA, which grants legal status to young people who came to the United States as children. President Donald Trump ended the program in September but gave Congress six months to find a solution.
However, shortly after the announcement by immigration officials, Trump tweeted that “DACA is probably dead.”
DACA, implemented in 2012 by former President Barack Obama, protects from deportation more than 800,000 young people – often called “Dreamers” – including over 25,000 in Arizona as of Sept. 27, 2017.
Shortly after the Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it was reinstating procedures that were in place before DACA was rescinded Sept. 5, 2017, Trump tweeted that Democrats were to blame for not making a deal on DACA.
DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018
Trump criticized the decision to continue accepting DACA renewals via Twitter stating that, “DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military.”
Data from Citizenship and Immigration Services says Arizona is home to the sixth-largest population of DACA enrollees, making up 3.7 percent of all “Dreamers.”