A federal judge has ruled that acting Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf has not been serving lawfully in his position and his suspension of protections of Dreamers, the migrants brought to the United States illegally as children, is illegal.
Judge Nicholas Garaufis, while issuing the ruling, said conferences will be held to work out his ruling, but concluded that when Wolf issued the memorandum to suspend protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is not valid, reports NBC News.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had wrongly tried to shut down DACA protections, but still, on July 8, Wolf suspended DACA, pending further review of it.
"The effort in the Wolf memo to gut the DACA program is overturned," said Karen Tumlin, a lawyer in the case and director of the Los Angeles-based Justice Action Center.
The decision will affect more than 1 million people, Tumlin added, and marks a "hopeful day for a lot of young people across the country."
President Donald Trump formally nominated Wolf for the Homeland Secretary spot, but he has not gotten a full vote yet in the Senate.
In his ruling, Garaufis cited the Government Accountability Office, which said in a report in August to Congress that Wolf had benefitted from an"invalid order of succession."
He also said that based on the text of the order of succession, neither Wolf or his predecessor, acting secretary Kevin McAleenan, possessed the authority to serve and the "Wolf Memorandum was not an exercise of legal authority."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.