Seven US Republican States Sue to Eliminate DACA Program

Seven U.S. Republican states have filed a lawsuit to rescind the Deferred Action and Childhood Arrivals, DACA, program, an Obama-era program which allowed minors to stay in the country. 

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Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia, Texas — asserts that the Obama administration overstepped its authority when it created the DACA program. 

According to the lawsuit Obama overstepped his authority in launching the program which essentially lent protection to hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation. Adding that the program was signed off without the U.S. Congress' authorization. 

"The executive unilaterally conferred lawful presence and work authorization on otherwise unlawfully present aliens, and then the executive used that lawful-presence ‘dispensation’ to unilaterally confer United States citizenship," the lawsuit states. 

Adding, that the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas has the authority to "immediately rescind and cancel all DACA permits currently in existence because they are unlawful," asking to block the government "from issuing or renewing DACA permits in the future, effectively phasing out the program within two years." 

Texas' Attorney General Ken Paxton who led the lawsuit wrote in a statement, “Our lawsuit is about the rule of law, not the wisdom of any particular immigration policy,” Paxton said in a statement. “Left intact, DACA sets a dangerous precedent by giving the executive branch sweeping authority to ignore the laws enacted by Congress and change our nation’s immigration laws to suit a president’s own policy preferences.”

“Instead of wasting taxpayer funds to pick on these Americans without status, the Attorney General should join the bipartisan chorus calling on Congress to fix a broken immigration system that denies these kids their rightful place at the American table,” state Rep. Rafael Anchia, head of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, told the Texas Tribune.

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The news comes days after Judge John D. Bates of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the third federal court, agreed with previous court rulings that the Trump administration’s fight to end DACA was "arbitrary and capricious," saying that the government’s legal reasoning to terminate the program was “virtually unexplained.”

Also in March, a Brooklyn Federal District Court judge allowed a coalition of immigration lawyers and a group of Democratic state attorneys general to challenge the repeal of the DACA program. 

While delivering his order, the judge noted that Trump’s use of "racial slurs" and "epithets" — both during his candidacy and his time at the White House, adding there was sufficient evidence to prove that the move to end DACA in September was based on an animus toward Latinos that violated the equal protection clause of the constitution. 

"Three activist federal judges have blocked the federal government from canceling DACA," Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, whose office filed the lawsuit, said at a news conference Tuesday. "That means that unelected federal judges are forcing the Trump administration to leave an unlawful program in place indefinitely as legal challenges drag on."