‘Dreamers’ were blocked from ACA insurance marketplace in 19 states. But not in North Carolina.

After an injunction by a federal court in North Dakota, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals participants were blocked from accessing the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace in 19 states. But North Carolina is not one of them.

That’s because North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein did not join the lawsuit brought by 19 attorneys general against the Biden administration earlier this year after it issued a new rule expanding access to the ACA marketplace — popularly known as “Obamacare” — to DACA recipients and other lawfully present undocumented immigrants.

A preliminary injunction granted Monday halted this expansion of access only in the states that brought the suit — all of which are represented by Republican attorneys general. States that did join the suit include the neighboring states of Virginia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. No state with a Democratic attorney general joined the lawsuit, nor did eight states with Republican attorneys general.

In his role as attorney general, Stein has battled efforts to curtail DACA protections, including joining efforts to petition the Department of Homeland Security to strengthen and preserve the program as well as an amicus brief in 2023 opposing legal efforts by Texas and a group of other Republican-controlled states to end the program.

“Dreamers should be able to study, work, and contribute to our communities without fear of deportation – a right that the U.S. Supreme Court has reaffirmed,” Stein said in 2023. “I’ll continue to fight to protect Dreamers and their right to stay in the United States.”

The DACA program was launched by President Barack Obama in 2012 as a means to grant temporary legal status to undocumented immigrants raised in the United States seeking a pathway to permanent residency. Since then, it has been a constant target for the Republican Party, and President Donald Trump in particular, who sought throughout most of his first term to end the program but was prevented from doing so by federal courts.

While North Carolinian DACA recipients retain access to the ACA’s health insurance marketplace for now, that will likely change under the second Trump administration. His campaign blasted the expansion in May as “unfair and unsustainable.”

“Joe Biden continues to force hardworking, tax-paying, struggling Americans to pay for the housing, welfare, and now the healthcare of illegal immigrants,” said campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. “President Trump will put America and the American worker first. He will seal the border, stop the invasion, and expand economic opportunity for American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

If his first term is any indication, both ACA and DACA will be constant targets of his as he seeks to undo Obama’s presidential legacy; the president-elect tried and failed to abolish both during his first term in office. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees the ACA, is set to be run by celebrity television host Mehmet Oz in Trump’s second term, while his nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services is the controversial environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump, though, has made some overtures to Democratic lawmakers for a different path — he said he hopes to “work with the Democrats on a plan” to allow DACA recipients to remain in the country in a recent appearance on NBC News’ Meet the Press. In that same appearance, though, he said he planned to end birthright citizenship, an unconstitutional proposal aimed at second-generation immigrants.

North Carolinians can enroll in plans provided through the ACA’s health insurance marketplace at HealthCare.gov. Open enrollment ends on Jan. 15, though those wishing to begin a plan on Jan. 1 must enroll before this coming Sunday, Dec. 15.