Updated at 8:34 a.m. PST
A narrowly divided U.S. Supreme Court extended a life-support line to some 650,000 so-called DREAMers on Thursday, allowing them to remain safe from deportation for now, while the Trump administration jumps through the administrative hoops that the court said are required before ending the program.
The vote was 5-4 with Chief Justice John Roberts casting the decisive fifth vote that sought to bridge the liberal and conservative wings of the court.
Roberts and the court's four liberal justices said the Department of Homeland Security's decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. (Read the decision here.)
In his opinion, Roberts wrote: "The appropriate recourse is therefore to remand to DHS so that it may reconsider the problem anew."
President Trump dismissed the ruling as "politically charged," turning it into a rallying cry for the 2020 election and the opportunity to appoint more conservative justices. The DACA decision follows another major ruling earlier in the week that granted employment protections for LGBTQ people.