California joins group of states suing administration over decision to phase out program for “Dreamers.”
California “stands with the millions of immigrants who make this state a vibrant and prosperous place.”
Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said it was the Obama administration’s “circumvention of Congress that got us to this point.”
The suit is the third in the past week to challenge Trump’s plan to end the DACA program unless Congress enacts it by law in six months. An additional 15 states and the District of Columbia filed the first suit in New York federal court, followed by a suit from the University of California, whose president, Janet Napolitano, drafted the DACA rules in President Barack Obama’s administration in 2012.
DACA provides renewable two-year reprieves from deportation to those who entered the U.S. without authorization before age 16, have attended school and have no serious criminal records. About one-fourth of the nearly 700,000 participants are in California, and many were brought by their parents to the U.S. as children.
Monday’s lawsuit, joined by Democratic attorneys general from Maine, Maryland and Minnesota, argued that ending the program discriminates against its participants, and “violates fundamental conceptions of justice,” by depriving them of a right to work legally and further their education.
The Trump administration, the suit said, is also acting illegally by breaking the government’s promise under Obama to keep DACA applicants’ personal information confidential. While the administration has said it will not single out participants in the program for deportation, the states’ lawyers noted that Trump signed an executive order in January removing privacy protections from noncitizens, and has taken other steps to make DACA recipients’ “sensitive information” available to immigration agents.
“These individuals are now in danger of being placed in removal proceedings based on information they provided in reliance on (the government’s) promises,” the suit said.
Like the two previous suits, Monday’s filing also contends that repealing DACA is a substantive step that requires the government to state legal reasons for its decision and solicit comments from the public before taking final action.
The only explanation the Trump administration has offered, the states said, was Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ muchdisputed, legally untested assertion that Obama acted unconstitutionally in establishing the program by executive order.
The suit did not mention the fact that Napolitano, as Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security, did not solicit public comments before implementing the rules for DACA.