Life will continue to be precarious for America’s Dreamers. A federal judge’s ruling this week has temporarily shut down a Biden administration policy that would have allowed many young adult immigrants to obtain insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s public marketplace.
Judge Daniel Traynor of the U.S. District Court in North Dakota issued the ruling Monday, as part of an ongoing lawsuit filed against the policy by Republican attorney generals in 19 states. The blockage is set to remain in place until the lawsuit reaches trial. It’s the latest setback for immigrants eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, whose residency in the U.S. is likely to be further threatened by the arrival of President-elect Trump’s second term next year.
Earlier this May, the Biden administration issued a new rule allowing DACA members and certain other groups of young immigrants to apply for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges—a rule that was estimated to affect upwards of 140,000 people currently living in the U.S. But many Republican lawmakers and officials were quick to criticize the policy as an overreach by the executive branch. In August, a band of attorney generals, led by those in Kansas and North Dakota, filed a lawsuit against the federal government over the rule. While the lawsuit is still underway, Traynor’s preliminary injunction will prevent eligible immigrants in these 19 states from accessing insurance provided by the ACA for now. It’s a decision that has angered many immigration advocates. Traynor was notably appointed to his current seat by Trump during his first term.
“Judge Traynor’s ruling is both disappointing and wrong on the law. While we study the court’s ruling to evaluate the next steps in this case, we will continue to fight on behalf of our clients and hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients who have been waiting over a decade to access life-sustaining care under the Affordable Care Act,” said Nicholas Espíritu, deputy legal director of the National Immigration Law Center, in a statement issued Monday by the organization.
DACA members are undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, but who have lived in the country ever since without no major issues (one key criteria for DACA enrollment is having no felonies or serious misdemeanors on record). DACA-eligible immigrants, often called Dreamers, are named after the DREAM Act—a 2007 legislative proposal aimed at providing a pathway to permanent legal residency. Despite multiple attempts, the act has failed to become law. President Obama started the DACA program in 2012 via executive order as a stopgap measure, allowing some Dreamers to live and apply for work permits without fearing deportation.
Unlike the DREAM act, however, DACA doesn’t provide a pathway to legal residency and members must renew their protective status every two years. Most young immigrants are also not protected by DACA (according to the National Immigration Forum, only 530,000 Dreamers out of 3.5 million are currently in the program), and DACA members continue to suffer many disadvantages compared to other Americans. One such disadvantage is health coverage, with DACA members more likely to have no health insurance at all, and the Biden administration’s rule was intended to help remedy that gap.
Even without this latest legal battle, however, the fate of DACA and Dreamer immigrants is on thin ice, especially with Trump’s second term on the horizon. Trump previously tried to tear down the DACA program during his first term, though was ultimately rebuffed by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court avoided ruling on the legality of the DACA program itself. And there are already other lawsuits winding their way through the lower courts that could bring the issue back up to the Supreme Court. Given that the Court has shifted further right since then, the status of DACA is far from stable.