‘See you in court’: States sue over DACA
Scrapping immigrant program will cause personal, systemic upheaval, lawsuit says
Fifteen states and the District of Columbia joined Wednesday to challenge the Trump administration’s decision to wind down a program that shields 800,000 young undocumented immigrants from deportation.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the legal action at a rally where he characterized President Trump’s rollback of DACA — the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — as “cruel, shortsighted, inhumane and potentially devastating ” to young immigrants known as DREAMers who were brought to the USA illegally as children.
The Trump administration’s decision Tuesday to phase out the program effectively kicks the immigrants’ fate to Congress, which has six months to find a permanent legislative fix for the program, which was created five years ago in an executive order by President Obama.
“When a bully steps up, we know that you have to step up to stop them quickly,” Schneiderman told a crowd gathered at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“To President Trump, let me say something I’ve had to say many times this year: I’ll see you in court,” he said, noting that 42,000 people in New York are protected from deportation through DACA.
In the 58-page complaint filed in a Brooklyn federal court, state officials asserted that the administration’s decision would cause “disruptions” in their economies, education and the health care systems where young immigrants provide “vital services.”
“Rescinding DACA will result in disruptions in each of these fields, as companies and nonprofits will be forced to terminate qualified and trained employees who have lost employment authorization,” the court documents stated.
State officials claimed that Trump’s actions were not driven by differences in public policy with the previous administration but exposed a willingness to discriminate against ethnic minorities to raise his political standing.
“The president has demonstrated a willingness to disparage Mexicans in a misguided attempt to secure support from his constituency, even when such impulses are impermissible motives for directing government policy,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit referred to Trump’s announcement of his candidacy in 2015 when he referred to some Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and people with “lots of problems.”
Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and American business leaders pledged their support for the legal action.
“Allowing nearly 18,000 DREAMers to live and work in Washington makes our communities stronger and better places to live,” Ferguson said. “I will do everything in my power to ensure that they can continue to feel secure in what is, for many of them, the only home they have ever known.”
Ferguson said the lawsuit had the support of several prominent Washington state businesses, including Amazon, Microsoft and Starbucks.
The 15 states joining in the lawsuit are New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia.