Federal agency resumes accepting DACA requests after judge's ruling

WASHINGTON (AP) - Citizenship and Immigration Services says it's resumed accepting requests to renew a grant of deferred action under the Obama-era program that shields from deportation young immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and who remain in the country illegally.
The decision comes four days after a federal judge, in a nod to pending lawsuits, temporarily blocked the Trump administration's decision to end the program.
In a statement posted Saturday on its website, the USCIS says the policy under the Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, will be operated under the terms in place before it was rescinded in September. But new applications won't be processed.
It comes as President Donald Trump says a program to protect DACA recipients, or so-called Dreamers, is "probably dead."
The Republican president tweeted Sunday morning to allege that "Democrats don't really want it," referring to the DACA protections.
DACA has protected about 800,000 people, many of them college-age students.
Trump last week rejected an immigration DACA deal drafted by a bipartisan group of senators. The deal included a pathway to citizenship for "Dreamers" and $1.6 billion for border security, including Trump's promised border wall.
President Trump has come under fire for his reported comments during a meeting about that bipartisan deal, in which he allegedly called African nations "s***holes" and questioned why the U.S. would take in more people from Haiti.