DACA Recipients Win Class Cert. in Revoked Protections Lawsuit

A judge grants Class certification to DACA recipients who filed a lawsuit claiming the revocation of their protections was unlawful.

A group of 22 current and former recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are suing the government over its revocation of the program.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez granted them Class certification and reinstated the work permits of recipients charged but not convicted of low-level crimes.

The DACA recipients state that deferred action is a “longstanding form of administrative action by which the Executive Branch decides, for humanitarian or other reasons, to refrain from seeking a noncitizen’s removal and to authorize his or her continued presence in the United States.” They go on to state that the DACA program grants deferred action to immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children, and who have passed extensive criminal background checks.

It was put into place by President Barack Obama in 2012, but was recently repealed by President Trump. Approximately 2,130 individuals have had their DACA protections revoked since August 2017.

In the DACA class action lawsuit, the recipients argued that “their permission to live in the United States and employment authorization [have been] arbitrarily stripped away…since President Trump took office, without any notice, reasoned explanation, or opportunity to be heard.”

The recipients in the DACA revocation class action lawsuit seek damages to remedy emotional distress that came with losing their DACA protections, and financial compensation for the jobs they lost. Judge Gutierrez agreed that these injuries were substantial.

Judge Gutierrez also agrees with the DACA recipients that the revocation of their protection was unjust. He notes that DACA protections always could be revoked if a recipient committed a severe crime, but the recipients in this class action lawsuit had their protections revoked for extremely minor crimes, and in many cases, were not even convicted. He maintains that these reasons are not lawful justification for revoking a DACA recipient’s protections.

The judge does note that the 22 recipients as named plaintiffs in the DACA protections class action lawsuit are too few for Class certification, but was persuaded by their argument that there may be as many as 700,000 similarly impacted individuals — the named recipients argue that their situations represent DACA revocations across the nation, and that they could easily find at least 20 more individuals to meet the Ninth’s Circuit’s requirement of 40 Class Members for certification.

Gutierrez took aim at Trump’s revocation of former president Barack Obama’s administrative action, granting an injunction temporarily blocking the government from revoking DACA protections from others without following a procedure that gives recipients warning and offers them opportunities to be heard and to make an appeal.

The DACA recipients are represented by Jennifer Chang Newell, Katrina L. Eiland, Michael K.T. Tan and David Hausman of the ACLU Foundation Immigrants’ Rights Project.

The DACA Protection Revocation Class Action Lawsuit is Inland Empire-Immigrant Youth Collective v. Elaine Duke, Case No. 5:17-cv-02048, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.