A group of almost 100 organizations is asking the Biden administration to protect DACA recipients from deportation, should the Obama-era program get forced to an end in court. 

DACA has given hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the US as kids temporary protection from deportation and a work permit. But a years-long legal battle has put recipients in limbo, and it’s blocked tens of thousands of other eligible immigrants from getting the status. 

Now a federal judge in Texas is expected to decide whether DACA was illegally created, as the suit against it has argued.

In a letter sent this week, the groups say Biden should step in by enacting Deferred Enforced Departure — a presidential authority that protects foreign nationals from deportation and gives them the ability to work.

"The prospect of returning an additional population of hundreds of thousands of former DACA-recipients to countries with whom the United States is already engaged in sensitive negotiations regarding the return of nationals and foreign nationals in much lower numbers does not augur well," the letter read. "For over a century, Presidents have taken executive action to protect foreign nationals in the United States and elsewhere whose return to their countries of origin would place them at risk and be adverse to United States foreign policy interests."

The groups say it’s no substitute for a legislative solution, but are asking Biden to temporarily safeguard some 1.5 million so-called "Dreamers" nationwide using the authority.