Last month, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which granted pseudo amnesty for illegal immigrants under the age of 30 who were brought to the United States as minors, was illegal, and halted the program. The Biden administration vowed to fight the ruling, but, according to a report from The Washington Times, Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security approved at least nine DACA applications and advanced dozens more—a direct violation of the judge’s ruling.
The acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Tracy Renaud, claims the actions on the applications were the result of human error. All of them took place in the early days after the ruling.
“USCIS believes that the technological and systematic solutions described … will provide a stopgap to prevent the issuance of new initial DACA grants,” Renaud told Judge Hanen, who ruled that DACA had been created illegally.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was the USCIS Director at the time DACA was created and oversaw its implementation.
Rosemary Jenks, the vice president of NumbersUSA, doesn’t buy the human error explanation.
“Both Secretary Mayorkas and acting Director Renaud are responsible for ensuring that every employee is in compliance with legal rulings. Their failure to do so is not surprising considering their willingness to also ignore laws enacted by Congress,” Jenks said.
Robert Law, the former chief of the office of policy and strategy at USCIS in the Trump administration, also seems suspicious of the “human error” excuse because the breaches only benefited illegal immigrants.
“The errors only go one direction and reflect a culture of the political leadership to have adjudicators rush to ‘Yes’ on all applications and petitions,” Law said.
The Washington Times reports that USCIS could face more scrutiny from Judge Hanen.
