A third federal judge has overruled the Trump administration’s decision to end a popular immigration program protecting immigrants who arrived in the United States as children.
In September, President Donald Trump canceled the program known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), triggering a wave of nationwide protests and legal actions against the move.
Similar to other rulings in the past, US District Court Judge John Bates concluded on Tuesday that Trump’s decision to wind down DACA was “arbitrary and capricious” because the Department of Homeland Security failed to “adequately explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful.”
The judge also said that administration has provided “meager legal reasoning” to support its decision.
Bates called the move “particularly egregious” because the lives of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients were built upon the protections provided by the program.
The ruling, however,…