President Ends DACA Program, Gives Congress Six Month Deadline to Pass Long-Term Fix for Dreamers

On September 5 U.S. Attorney General Sessions announced that the Administration will end the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. The program has been in effect since mid-2012 and has allowed individuals brought to the U.S. as children or teens before 2007 to apply for work permits and avoid deportation. To be eligible to apply for DACA, an individual had to be under age 16 upon entry into the U.S. and no older than 31 as of June 15, 2012, must have lived in the U.S. continuously since 2007, either be enrolled in high school or college, or already have a diploma or degree, and have no felony criminal convictions, no significant misdemeanor convictions, no more than three other misdemeanor convictions, and not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety. If granted deferred action, the individual’s deportation would be deferred and received a work permit (EAD) valid for two years and renewable for additional two-year periods. These individuals are known popularly as dreamers.

Under the Trump administration program, anyone whose DACA status is set to expire by no later than March 5, 2018 will be able to apply for a final two-year permit by October 5, 2017, but all DACA program beneficiaries whose permits expire after March 5, 2018 are ineligible for a renewal. No new DACA applications will be processed. Any individual who has an EAD though the DACA program has no obligation to tell his or her employer that it is a DACA EAD. An employee whose EAD expires and is not renewable will be ineligible to work legally in the U.S. It is crucial that employers know when their employees’ EADs expire. Although there are indications that Congressional Democrats and President Trump are nearing a deal to save the DACA program, the official stance of the Administration is that Congress has six months to pass legislation to save the program. If Congress does not pass legislation by early March 2018, then DACA program enrollees whose EADs expire in the meantime will be subject to deportation.

For an employer that knows or believes it has employees with work permits through DACA, there is currently little they can do after the Attorney General’s announcement, other than advising these employees who are eligible to renew their EADs to do so by October 5, 2017. Employers cannot preemptively discharge these employees before their EADs expire. Doing so may expose the employer to claims of national origin discrimination. An employee whose EAD expires must be removed from the employer’s active payroll. Employers that refuse to release the employees who are not authorized to work in the U.S. can be liable for significant monetary penalties.

For questions about DACA and how it could affect your employees and your business, contact Patrick W. McGovern, Esq., Partner in the firm’s Immigration Law Practice Group, at pmcgovern@genovaburns.com, or by phone at 973-535-7129.