Dreamers Panic as Feds Revoke 3-Year Work Permits Granted to Undocumented Immigrants

The federal U.S. government is now revoking the three-year work permits it wrongly issued to about 2,000 undocumented immigrants who were recipients of President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

Justice Department lawyers admitted last Friday in a filing to Texas Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that the federal government had erroneously granted the permits to the so-called Dreamers, or young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, after Hanen blocked the program in February.

At the same time, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency under the Department of Homeland Security, told Dreamers not to panic, assuring them that they do not face immediate layoff and will only need to return their three-year employment authorization documents so that they could be replaced with work permits valid for two years.

The immigration services office clarified that Dreamers do not need to return their three-year work permits if they were issued before Feb. 16, 2015, when Judge Hanen issued his injunction.

Lorella Praeli, advocacy and policy director of United We Dream, acknowledged that DACA recipients panicked when they learned about the return order.

"There's been a little bit of panic in the last two days. People are saying, 'What's going to happen? I heard that I got a three-year DACA, and they're going to take it away from me.' And what you need to remember is that's actually not true," she said.

Praeli told DACA recipients who got the letters to follow instructions. She said undocumented immigrants who were granted DACA status and got three-year work permits between Nov. 20 last year and Feb. 16 this year "are fine."

"They should not be sending their cards. They should feel really happy that they're lucky and get to have DACA for three years. And everyone else should not panic," she added.

The DACA is an immigration program launched in 2012 to protect qualified individuals from priority deportation.

Last year, President Obama expanded the DACA by granting three-year work permits to recipients.

In their filing to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, U.S. Department of Justice lawyers blamed a technology glitch for why the federal government continued to approve new amnesty applications from undocumented immigrants in even after a federal judge issued an injunction last Feb. 16, telling the court that they have already instructed about 2,000 of these immigrants to return their three-year work permits since they are now voided.

The immigration services agency said it has already corrected the immigrants' records at its headquarters and wrote to the immigrants to send back their three-year documents and accept two-year papers instead.

The agency also told Judge Hanen that more similar cases could still be found as it reviews the tens of thousands of applications it has received.

Justice department lawyers are reportedly scrambling to prevent a possible punitive action by Judge Hanen after a series of embarrassing missteps.

First, the lawyers misled the court as to the more than 100,000 three-year amnesty applications that were approved between Nov. 20 and Feb. 16, when Judge Hanen issued his injunction. The lawyers said they didn't intend to mislead, and they assumed the judge knew those applications were being approved.

Later, however, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had approved some 2,000 three-year applications even after Judge Hanen issued his injunction — a clear violation of the judge's order. This raised questions on the lawyers' excuses for the first 100,000 botched applications.

Judge Hanen has stopped Obama's expanded deportation amnesty, announced in November last year that would grant tentative legal status and work permits to as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants. The amnesty expands an earlier 2012 program Obama announced that covers the Dreamers