(Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

On Friday, a federal court in Texas ruled that the federal government can no longer accept new undocumented immigrants into DACA. The program, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, has served as a legal shield for 600,000 people who entered the United States illegally as children.

In DACA's decadelong history, neither the program nor the people protected by it have ever been secure. And it's not like this is a program that has been lacking support on both sides of the political aisle. A Pew Research Center study in 2020 showed that (perhaps surprisingly to some) 54% of Republicans support DACA while (unsurprisingly) 90% of Democrats do.

Adriana Gonzalez, a South Florida attorney who has helped many DACA-protected individuals over the years, sees this as yet another obstacle to a secure life for them the United States.

"The fact that we are in 2021 and DACA has again today been given what might be a knockout punch is beyond belief," she said. "It is unconscionable that the federal district court has adopted a position that puts so many people in immediate danger."

The verbiage of today's federal ruling in Texas is particularly unsettling for DACA's many proponents. While the Texas court did not order the federal government to invalidate the current protections for the 616,000 people in the program, it directly attacked the Obama administration for illegally establishing the program, arguing that it had no legal right to do so.

And it's not like things were good for DACA recipients literally yesterday when CNN ran a piece on the travails of a DACA recipient being strangled by government red tape. Between endless permits, cycles of misinformation, and constant waiting, the old and new obstacles faced by DACA recipients are a deep program fissure.

DACA has also always suffered from one fundamental design problem, which may be its ultimate demise: It is an executive action. This means that it can fall prey to the whim of post-Obama presidents, as it did under the Trump administration, which tried its utmost to end it.

What would ultimately save DACA and protect the people it was created to help has been far too late in coming. With both parties unable to pass legislation to make DACA permanent and give it resilience that no executive action can have, its vulnerability mirrors that of the people enrolled in the program: it is, as we saw today, now in the hands of the courts to shape its future.

This isn't a viable solution for anyone, including Gonzalez, who adds a fitting final note:

"It's time for immigration reform," she said. "The courts simply can't be trusted with this."

Aron Solomon, J.D., is the head of strategy for Esquire Digital and the editor of Today's Esquire. He has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, and was the founder of LegalX, the world's first legal technology accelerator. Solomon's work has been featured in TechCrunch, Fortune, Venture Beat, The Independent, TechCrunch Japan, Yahoo, ABA Journal, Law.com, The Boston Globe, The Hill, and many other leading publications around the world.