Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the federal government Tuesday to force the cancellation of an Obama administration program that offers deportation protection to unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.
The federal lawsuit, filed in Brownsville, was joined by six other states and seeks to bolster President Donald Trump's efforts to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a program that has shielded about 700,000 young adults from deportation.
To date, however, federal courts have blocked Trump's attempts to phase out the program, prompting Paxton to try a different tactic -- a lawsuit that names administration officials as defendants but seeks to accomplish the administration's goal of ending DACA.
President Barack Obama announced the program in 2012, saying he wanted to protect people who were “Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper.”
But Paxton and other opponents insist that Obama exceeded his authority, usurping law-making power that the Constitution designated for Congress.
“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,” Paxton told reporters Tuesday.
Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said Paxton’s “cruel anti-immigration agenda will rip over 124,000 Texans away from their families and jeopardize our economy.”
“The average age of DACA participants at the time they arrived in the U.S. is 6½ years old. They should feel safe and accepted in the only country they know to be their home,” Hinojosa said.
State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, called the lawsuit unnecessary and cruel. “These are young people who were brought here when they were young. They’ve done nothing wrong on their own,” said Rodriguez, policy chairman for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus.
But Paxton said the lawsuit was necessary to preserve the rule of law and the power of Congress to set immigration policies.
And while he praised Trump’s efforts to end DACA, Paxton sharply criticized “three activist judges” who, reacting to lawsuits filed by DACA recipients and their supporters, in recent months ordered federal officials to keep the program operating.
Trump’s latest setback came last week, when U.S. District Judge John Bates of the Federal Court for the District of Columbia ordered deportation protections to remain in place and told the Department of Homeland Security to resume accepting new and renewed DACA applications.
Bates said administration officials had acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner by phasing out the program without explaining why they believed it was illegal. The judge also delayed his order for 90 days to give officials time to provide that explanation.
Federal judges in New York and San Francisco have also blocked efforts to cancel the program.
“Our frustration is not with this administration, it’s with three federal judges in various places of the country,” Paxton said. “Unelected federal judges are forcing the Trump administration to leave an unlawful program in place indefinitely as legal challenges drag on.”
The Obama-era policy offers deportation protection and renewable, two-year work permits to about 700,000 people who were brought to the United States before their 16th birthday, have lived in the country continuously since mid-2007, are in school or graduated, or were honorably discharged from the military, and have no felonies or significant misdemeanors.
The lawsuit seeks a federal court order declaring DACA unconstitutional and stopping the federal government from issuing or renewing DACA permits. It does not seek to remove deportation protections from current DACA recipients or to rescind already issued permits, Paxton said.
A Republican, Paxton has taken a national lead in efforts to upend immigration policies advanced by Obama, a Democrat.
In 2015, Paxton led a coalition of 26 states that successfully challenged an Obama order to expand DACA and add similar deportation protection for unauthorized immigrants who were parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents. Known as DAPA, or Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, the policy could have protected up to 5 million immigrants from deportation but was blocked by the courts before being formally rescinded by the Trump administration in June.
Credit: Nick Wagner/Austin American-Statesman
Credit: Nick Wagner/Austin American-Statesman
The administration, however, left DACA in place, and Paxton responded last year by threatening to sue federal officials if Trump did not cancel the program.
On Sept. 5 — Paxton’s deadline for action — U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that DACA would be phased out and that no new applications would be accepted, prompting multiple lawsuits by those hoping to save the program.
Although Sessions’ action kept Texas from filing suit last year, Paxton said the administration’s inability to follow through on ending DACA prompted Tuesday’s federal court action, which was joined by Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia.
About the Author
