Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), sometimes called Deferred Action for Parental Accountability, was a planned United States immigration policy to grant deferred action status to certain undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States since 2010 and have children who are either American citizens or lawful permanent residents. It was prevented from going into effect. Deferred action would not be legal status but would come with a three-year renewable work permit and exemption from deportation. DAPA was a presidential executive action, not a law passed by Congress.
The program was announced in November 2014 by President Barack Obama, along with a number of immigration reform steps including increased resources for border enforcement, new procedures for high-skilled immigrants, and an expansion of the existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Several U.S. states filed lawsuits against the federal government, arguing that DAPA violates the Constitution and federal statutes. A temporary injunction was issued in February 2015, blocking the program from going into effect while the lawsuit proceeds. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, and a U.S. Supreme Court 4–4 split decision in June 2016 effectively left the block in place.
On June 15, 2017, the Trump administration announced the rescission of the DAPA order.
Background
On June 27, 2013, the U.S. Senate's Gang of Eight passed their comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate. When pressed to take unilateral executive action to limit deportations on Univision in March 2014, President Barack Obama replied "until Congress passes a new law, then I am constrained in terms of what I am able to do."
On June 9, 2014, House Whip Kevin McCarthy announced that House Republicans had enough votes to pass the bill. However, the next day House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary election, so on June 30, Speaker John Boehner announced that he would not bring the bill to a vote. That same day, President Obama delivered remarks in the White House Rose Garden promising to "fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress."
Over the next eight months the Obama Administration went through sixty iterations of different possible executive actions. Finally, on November 20, 2014, President Obama delivered a primetime televised address to the nation announcing DAPA. The Office of Legal Counsel advised that the program was constitutional, finding it was similar to President George H. W. Bush's 1990 "Family Fairness" program. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson then released two memorandums directing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make undocumented individuals without criminal histories the lowest priority for removal, and to grant deferred action to undocumented immigrants who are the parents of a U.S. citizens or lawful permanent resident.
The President's program, when combined with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, would have delayed deportation of slightly less than half of the 11 million undocumented people in the United States. More than 10 million people in the United States reside in a household with at least one adult who would have been eligible for DAPA, with two thirds of those adults having lived in the United States for 10 years or more. Over half of the undocumented population eligible for the President's delayed deportation live in California, Texas, and New York.
United States v. Texas
In December 2014, Texas and 25 other states, all with Republican governors, sued in the District Court for the Southern District of Texas asking the court to enjoin implementation of both DAPA and the DACA expansion. On February 16, 2015, Judge Andrew S. Hanen issued a preliminary injunction blocking the DAPA program from going into effect while the lawsuit proceeds.
The Obama Administration appealed the order for a preliminary injunction and asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans to stay the district court's injunction pending appeal. On May 26, 2015, the administration's motion for a stay was denied by a three member motions panel with one dissent, meaning that the government could not implement DAPA until the Fifth Circuit ruled on the appeal of the injunction order itself. That ruling came on November 9, 2015, with a three-member panel of the Fifth Circuit affirming the district court's preliminary injunction, with one dissent.
