A federal judge issued an injunction partially halting President Biden’s attempt to expand Obamacare to include illegal immigrant Dreamers under the DACA program, saying the administration was trying to rewrite immigration law.
Obamacare doesn’t let illegal immigrants sign up for coverage or subsidies. The Biden administration tried to redefine Dreamers as quasi-legal in order to make them qualified. Still, U.S. District Judge Daniel M. Traynor said that power belongs to Congress, not the president.
He issued an injunction that covers 19 states that challenged Mr. Biden’s move.
“Congress has laid out the categories of those who are qualified aliens … and nowhere does it state deferred action aliens are qualified aliens,” Judge Traynor, a Trump appointee to the federal court in North Dakota, wrote in his ruling Monday.
DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is the Obama-era program that grants a short-term deportation amnesty to illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, work toward an education and keep a relatively clean criminal record.
When it was created in 2012, the Obama administration specifically decided recipients would not be eligible for the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which expands insurance coverage through government subsidies and state-based insurance markets.
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Mr. Biden, who was vice president when the initial decision was made, reversed course last year and attempted to expand Obamacare to DACA recipients.
“They’re American in every way except on paper,” he said.
Judge Traynor, though, said that paper still matters.
He said under federal law, DACA recipients are still considered to be “unlawfully present” and the Affordable Care Act bars coverage or subsidies from going to those here illegally.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute, which worked on the case with the state challengers, hailed the ruling.
“This expansion of Obamacare to illegal aliens once again shows the Biden administration’s contempt for the law,” said Dale L. Wilcox, IRLI’s executive director.
The states that sued, and are now covered by the injunction, are Ohio, Idaho, Nebraska, South Carolina, Kansas, Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Texas, Florida and Arkansas.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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