US Supreme Court blocks Trump bid to end DACA

The US Supreme Court on Thursday dealt President Donald Trump a major setback on his hardline immigration policies, ruling against his bid to end a programme that protects from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants.

These immigrants are dubbed as "Dreamers," who entered the United States illegally as children.

The justices on a 5-4 vote upheld the lower court rulings that found Trump's 2017 move to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme, created in 2012 by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, was unlawful.

The bench found that the administrations actions were "arbitrary and capricious" under a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act.

The ruling means that the roughly 649,000 immigrants, mostly young Hispanic adults born in Mexico and other Latin American countries, currently enrolled in DACA will remain protected from deportation and eligible to obtain renewable two-year work permits.

The ruling does not prevent Trump from trying again to end the programme. But his administration is unlikely to be able to end DACA before the Nov. 3 election in which Trump is seeking a second four-year term in office.

Trump's administration has argued that Obama exceeded his constitutional powers when he created DACA by executive action, bypassing Congress.

A collection of states including California and New York, people currently enrolled in DACA and civil rights groups all filed suit to block Trump's plan to end the programme. Lower courts in California, New York and the District of Columbia ruled against Trump and left DACA in place, finding that his move to revoke the programme violated a US law called the Administrative Procedure Act.

Trump has made his crackdown on legal and illegal immigration, including pursuing construction of a wall along the US-Mexican border, a central part of his presidency and his 2020 re-election campaign.

(with inputs from Reuters)