The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas – Brownsville Division on Friday, August 31, 2018, issued an unexpected reprieve for the DACA program which will continue to operate for now.

The decision was issued almost exactly a year after President Donald Trump opted to end the DACA program.

U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen decided not to issue a ruling that would have immediately blocked DACA’s continuation.

Texas and the other plaintiff states were asking the court to halt the operation of DACA, a program that has been ongoing for more than six (6) years.

Judge Hansen noted that the dissolution of DACA would deprive the DACA recipients of ongoing lawful status and the ability to work. The granting of the injunction on the other hand would eliminate the costs and damages (medical, education and law enforcement expenses) that the complaining states had suffered.

In addition, Judge Hansen ruled that Texas and the coalition of states waited more than five (5) years after the implementation of DACA to file the lawsuit and challenge the program.

In weighing the evidence, Judge Hansen chose to maintain the status quo and deny the injunction to halt the DACA program.

Judge Hanen in his 117-page decision wrote “DACA is a popular program and one that Congress should consider saving,”

Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order in NAACP v. Trump on Friday August 18, 2018 that partially stays its original order for the full restoration of the DACA program as to new DACA applications and applications for advance parole, but not as to renewal applications.

The order simply means that no new DACA applications and applications for advance parole will be accepted by USCIS for processing, but renewal applications can continue to be submitted for adjudication.

WASHINGTON –The Internal Revenue Service today (August 22, 2018 ) announced a new format for individual tax transcripts that will redact personally identifiable information from the Form 1040 series to better protect taxpayer data.

This new transcript replaces the previous format and will be the default format available via Get Transcript Online, Get Transcript by Mail or the Transcript Delivery System for tax professionals as of September 23, 2018.

Financial entries will remain visible, which will give taxpayers and third-parties the data they need for tax preparation or income verification.

The U.S. Army has halted the purge of foreign born soldiers who were recruited through a program known as Military Accessions Vital to National Interest ( MAVNI) that offers citizenship to skilled immigrants in exchange for military service. The recent expulsion policy that abruptly discharged dozens of recruits from the Service is the Army’s effort to curtail a program that its leaders say poses a security risk. The Army ordered the halt to the discharges in a memorandum dated July 20, 2018 after a handful of the discharged recruits sued in federal court, prompting widespread media coverage of the purge last month.

The Trump administration failed again to convince a federal judge that there’s a legitimate reason to rescind legal protections for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children and seek to avoid deportation. U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington said last Friday, August 3, 2018, that a second attempt by the Department of Homeland Security to offer a “rational explanation” for the agency’s decision had fallen short. “The court simply holds that if DHS wishes to rescind the program — or to take any other action, for that matter — it must give a rational explanation for its decision,” Bates said. “A conclusory assertion that a prior policy is illegal, accompanied by a hodgepodge of illogical or post hoc policy assertions, simply will not do. The court therefore reaffirms its conclusion that DACA’s rescission was unlawful and must be set aside.” The judge called the plan “virtually unexplained”.

Judge Bates gave the administration 20 days to decide whether it would appeal before he blocks the DACA rescission.

According to a recent report by researchers at Syracuse University immigrants in the state of New York state have the greatest likelihood of engaging a lawyer and the lowest rate of deportation orders of any state with an immigration court,

The school’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) examined government data for all immigration court cases between February 2002 and February 2018 and noted that 74 percent of cases in New York State had attorneys, and just 28 percent received removal or deportation orders.

Susan Long, a statistics professor and co-director of TRAC, said it’s no coincidence that New York, with so many lawyers, would have the lowest rate of deportation orders. “It is very difficult to be successful in court without representation,” she said. “It’s a very complicated law that we have, and very difficult to represent yourself.”

The rest of the country is a stark contrast to New York.

In Texas – which has the busiest immigration courts in the country, with more than 733,000 cases between 2002 and 2018 – only 29.1 percent of cases had lawyers, and almost 69 percent received removal orders.

California – the second busiest immigration courts- only 53.6 percent of its immigration cases were represented while 41.9 percent received removal orders.

New York has the nation’s third busiest immigration court system.

Nationally, TRAC found 45.9 percent of more than 3.8 million immigration cases had legal representation and 50.9 percent of cases received deportation orders. Those who didn’t fall into either camp may have chosen voluntary departure.

A recent report on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver highlighted the problems faced by immigrants who do not engage lawyers for representation in immigration court.