Its subtle. > Duke was bound by the Attorney General’s determination that DACA is illegal. [...] The Attorney General concluded that the legal defects in DACA

Its subtle. > Duke was bound by the Attorney General’s determination that DACA is illegal. [...] The Attorney General concluded that the legal defects in DACA mirrored those that the courts had recognized in DAPA. The Fifth Circuit [...] found that DAPA violated the INA because it extended eligibility for benefits to a class of unauthorized aliens. But the defining feature of DAPA (and DACA) is DHS’s decision to defer removal, and the Fifth Circuit carefully distinguished that forbearance component from the associated benefits eligibility. Eliminating benefits eligibility while continuing forbearance thus remained squarely within Duke’s discretion. Yet, rather than addressing forbearance in her decision, Duke treated the Attorney General’s conclusion regarding the illegality of benefits as sufficient to rescind both benefits and forbearance, without explanation. That reasoning repeated the error in Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association of the United States, Inc. v. State Farm— treating a rationale that applied to only part of a policy as sufficient to rescind the entire policy. In short, even if you take the Trump administration's rationale at face value, the only portion of DACA which has been determined to be illegal by either a court or the administration was the extension of SS & Medicare benefits to illegal aliens. The "deferred action" part of DACA has never been considered illegal.