Second federal appeals court rules against Trump administration over DACA rollback

A second federal appeals court on Friday ruled against the Trump administration in its attempt to roll back the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and said its decision to do so was unlawful.

A divided three-judge panel on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to rescind the DACA program violated federal law because “it was not adequately explained and thus was arbitrary and capricious.”

The Richmond-based federal appeals court is the second appeals court to rule against President Trump in his attempt to wind down the DACA program, which was implemented by the Obama administration in 2012 and protected immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children from the threat of deportation.