WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump denounced the federal courts Wednesday as "broken and unfair" after a district judge in San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction keeping protections in place for so-called Dreamers.
"It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts," Trump wrote in a tweet.
On Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administration's decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which has protected from deportation some 700,000 people who came to the country illegally as children.
Alsup granted a request by the state of California, the University of California and other plaintiffs to stop Trump from ending DACA on March 5.
The administration's decision to end DACA, which was announced in September, was based on a "flawed" legal analysis, Alsup wrote in his decision. Dreamers would be irreparably harmed if their DACA protections, which allow them to live and work legally in the U.S., were stripped away before the courts had a chance to fully consider their claims, he ruled.
The action is the mirror image of a ruling in 2015 by a federal judge in Texas who ruled in favor of that state when it sought to block President Barack Obama from expanding DACA to include the parents of Dreamers. Trump administration officials praised that judicial ruling. By contrast, they sharply criticized Alsup's decision.
While the judge's decision offered a temporary reprieve to Dreamers, it complicates negotiations on Capitol Hill, where the March deadline had been motivating lawmakers to devise a legislative solution.
Congress often works best when facing a deadline. The court's injunction removes some of the urgency that had been developing as more than 120 DACA recipients a day fall out of protected status _ a number that was expected to swell to 1,000 in March.
"The court ruling on DACA, while important, in no way lessens the urgency with which Congress must act to protect Dreamers," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. "The clock is ticking for Congress to do their job and pass legislation supported by a vast majority of Americans."
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer agreed, saying on the Senate floor: "The ruling last night in no way diminishes the urgency of solving the DACA issue. ... We cannot wait. ... Delay is a tactic employed by those who do not wish to see a deal."
Top congressional leaders are expected to begin discussing a potential legislative deal that would include four priorities agreed to at a meeting with Trump at the White House a day earlier.
That deal would include beefed up border security and other changes to immigration law in exchange for permanent protections for Dreamers. But the two sides remain far apart on the details of a compromise.
Trump's meeting at the White House with 20 lawmakers outlined the contours of a possible deal.
The president acknowledged, for example, that his promised border wall _ a nonstarter for Democrats _ would not necessarily need to span 2,000 miles of the border but could involve fencing and other measures, including technology, to deter illegal crossings.
Republicans also want to impose new limits on family reunification by preventing newly legal immigrants from applying to bring their family members to the United States. Efforts to limit so-called "chain migration" for spouses and children have largely been opposed by Democrats, but a 2013 bipartisan immigration overhaul bill in the Senate included tweaks that would have restricted immigrants' siblings from being eligible.
Democrats also are considering a Republican proposal to overhaul the diversity lottery that Trump also wants to end. It would transfer some, if not all, of the 50,000 annual visas that are available in a lottery system to immigrants now in the United States under temporary protective status. That could help some of the more than 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants who must leave the country after the Trump administration said it would end the program.
The White House suggested the court's ruling would make a legislative deal harder to obtain.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement: "We find this decision to be outrageous, especially in light of the president's successful bipartisan meeting with House and Senate members at the White House on the same day," Sanders said.
Trump promised during his campaign to end the DACA program, and has repeatedly said the Obama-era program is unconstitutional and an abuse of executive power.
He has also said he does not want the Dreamers to be harmed and has asked Congress to pass legislation to protect them. But he's sent mixed signals to Capitol Hill on what sort of legislation he would back, which has contributed to a legislative deadlock on the issue.
"An issue of this magnitude must go through the normal legislative process," Sanders said. "President Trump is committed to the rule of law, and will work with members of both parties to reach a permanent solution that corrects the unconstitutional actions taken by the last administration."
