US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) released guidance late last month on how they will implement Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf’s July 28 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) memorandum, which was issued after the Supreme Court rejected in June the Trump administration's attempt to rescind the DACA program.

USCIS notes that under the guidance the agency will reject without prejudice and return fees for all initial DACA requests from applicants who have never previously received DACA. The agency will continue to accept requests from applicants who have been granted DACA at any time in the past and will also accept properly submitted requests for advance parole at the address specified on the Direct Filing Addresses for Form I-131 webpage.

For DACA approvals going forward, USCIS will limit the grants of deferred action and employment authorization to no more than one year, but the agency “will not rescind any currently valid two-year grants of DACA or associated employment authorization documents (EADs), unless USCIS terminates an alien’s DACA for failure to continue to meet the DACA criteria (see 2012 Memorandum), including failure to warrant a favorable exercise of prosecutorial discretion.” The agency will replace two-year EADs that are lost, stolen, or damaged with the “same facial two-year validity period assuming the EAD replacement application is otherwise approvable.” DACA recipients should file their renewal request between 150 and 120 days before their current grant of DACA expires.

USCIS will grant advance parole for travel outside the US to DACA recipients for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit in keeping with the governing statute.” USCIS will not rescind any previously granted advance parole documents unless there is another legal reason to do so. The agency will determine whether to grant advance parole to the applicant on a case-by-case basis after reviewing all the factors. When applying for advance parole, valid reasons for international travel are listed below (although even if an applicant establishes that they meet one of the examples below, USCIS may still deny the request for advance parole in discretion after reviewing the “totality of the circumstances”):

Travel to support the national security interests of the US;
Travel to support US federal law enforcement interests;
Travel to obtain life-sustaining medical treatment that is not otherwise available to the applicant in the US; or
Travel needed to support the immediate safety, wellbeing, or care of an immediate relative, particularly minor children of the applicant.

USCIS notes that as always parole into the US is not guaranteed and applicants traveling under advance parole are still subject to immigration inspection at a port-of-entry to determine whether they are eligible to come into the US.