The scathing ruling handed down by a Republican-appointed U.S. District Court judge was the most crippling yet to the Trump administration's ability to end the DACA program, but it's status quo for the next three months.
Tuesday night's ruling by U.S. District Court Judge John Bates' went further than two previous injunctions - California and New York - against President Donald Trump's pursuit to end protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, ordering the administration to start processing new applications by illegal immigrants, Buzzfeed reports.
However, Judge Bates, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, stayed his own order for 90 days to give the administration time to "better explain its rescission decision" he outlined in his 60-page ruling.
Bates set a status hearing for July 27.
But he didn't mince words about Trump's plan to rescind DACA, calling it "arbitrary" and "capricious," and wrote that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "failed to adequately explain its conclusion the program was unlawful." Bates also wrote the administration gave "meager legal reasoning" to end DACA.
"Each day that the agency delays is a day that aliens who might otherwise be eligible for initial grants of DACA benefits are exposed to removal because of an unlawful agency action," Bates wrote.
A Department of Justice spokesman Tuesday night said the administration would "vigorously defend" its position.
If Bates is not satisfied with the Trump administration's response within those 90 days, he will rescind the government's application to terminate DACA, thus opening the door for thousands more illegal immigrants to apply for protections, in addition to renewals for the nearly 700,000 already here.
"We are pleased and gratified . . . but we’re not out of the woods yet," said Bradford Berry, general counsel for the NAACP, one of the organizations who filed suit to prevent the end of DACA. "The government still has an opportunity to try to save their rescission of the program."
Microsoft and Princeton University also joined the lawsuit.