HOUSTON -- A federal judge did not immediately issue a ruling after a court hearing Tuesday on the fate of a U.S. program shielding people who were brought to the country illegally as children.
During a nearly 3½-hour hearing, Texas and eight other states asked U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which provides limited protections to about 650,000 people. The program was enacted by former President Barack Obama in 2012.
The states, represented by the Texas attorney general's office, argued that the program violates the Constitution by circumventing Congress' authority on immigration laws. The states also argued that it illegally awards benefits such as work authorization to recipients and has increased states' costs, including $250 million a year for social services to the program's recipients in Texas.
"President Obama overstepped his authority when his administration issued the DACA memorandum in 2012," Todd Disher, a lawyer with the Texas attorney general's office, told Hanen.
A group of recipients represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the New Jersey attorney general's office asked Hanen to dismiss the lawsuit. They argued that Obama had the authority to institute the program.
Nina Perales, a lawyer for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told Hanen that the states lack standing to sue because they weren't harmed by the DACA program, as benefits such as work authorization for recipients were not given by the program but authorized under other programs and regulations that had previously been created.
The states' case "is like a doughnut. The center is empty," Perales said.
Hanen is expected to rule at a later date.
The U.S. Supreme Court previously ruled that President Donald Trump's attempt to end the program in 2017 was unlawful. A New York judge in December ordered the Trump administration to restore the program.
But the Houston case directly targets the original terms under which the DACA program was created.
Suing alongside Texas are Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia -- states that all have Republican governors or state attorneys general.
President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to protect the program, but a ruling against the program could limit his ability to keep the program or something similar in place.
"DACA has to be replaced by a legislative approach," said the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund's president, Thomas Saenz.
But Congress has not taken any action related to the program in recent years.
While the DACA program is often described as a program for young migrants, many recipients have lived in the U.S. for a decade or longer after being brought into the country without permission or overstaying visas.
The hearing on efforts to end the program came a day after top advisers to Biden said they will not immediately roll back asylum restrictions at the Mexico border and other restrictive Trump administration policies, walking back some of Biden's campaign promises for "Day One" changes.
Susan E. Rice, incoming domestic policy adviser, and Jake Sullivan, Biden's pick for national security adviser, provided written statements in an exclusive interview with the Spanish wire service EFE saying they will "need time" to undo Trump's immigration policies.
Rice said Biden will use executive authority to implement his immigration agenda, but her statements urging patience appeared to reflect the incoming administration's worries that easing up too quickly on Trump's enforcement system could trigger a new migration surge at the border.
"Migrants and asylum seekers absolutely should not believe those in the region peddling the idea that the border will suddenly be fully open to process everyone on Day 1. It will not," Rice said, according to a translation of the interview transcript.
Immigrant advocacy groups and others who oppose Trump's policies have pushed Biden to embrace wholesale changes to a U.S. enforcement model designed to deter illegal migration through a system of detention and deportation.
"Our priority is to reopen asylum processing at the border consistent with the capacity to do so safely and to protect public health, especially in the context of covid-19," Rice said. "This effort will begin immediately, but it will take months to develop the capacity that we will need to reopen fully."
Similarly, Sullivan told EFE that the administration would not immediately end the "Migration Protection Protocols" that Biden had promised to terminate on his first day in office. Under those Trump measures, asylum seekers are sent back to Mexico to wait outside U.S. territory -- some in squalid tent camps -- while their claims are processed in U.S. courts.
Migration Protection Protocols "has been a disaster from the start and has led to a humanitarian crisis in northern Mexico," Sullivan said. "But putting the new policy into practice will take time."
Information for this article was contributed by Juan A. Lozano and Nomaan Merchant of The Associated Press; and by Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti of The Washington Post.