DACA is in jeopardy. Can the Biden administration save it?

The Biden administration is again trying to shore up the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program against ongoing legal challenges that threaten to revoke protections for thousands of immigrants.

The effort is an important signal of the Biden administration’s commitment to the program, but is far from a perfect fix. While the more than 450-page final rule, effective October 31, would formally codify DACA as a federal regulation, it will offer current “DREAMers” — unauthorized immigrants who came to the US as children — little immediate protection. It also doesn’t allow any new DACA applications for now, narrowing its impact to the more than 600,000 people currently enrolled in the program.

“Today, we are fulfilling our commitment to preserve and strengthen DACA by finalizing a rule that will reinforce protections, like work authorization, that allow Dreamers to live more freely and to invest in their communities more fully,” President Joe Biden said in a statement on Wednesday.

Since former President Barack Obama created the program in 2012 via executive action, the program has shielded more than 800,000 DREAMers from deportation and allowed them to apply for work permits. Recent legal challenges to the program have put it in danger, however, leading the Biden administration to issue the new rule.

Because there are still more than two months until the rule goes into effect, the immediate status quo will not change, meaning those legal challenges still loom over the program, and DREAMers have no protection from any new challenges in the intervening period.