Seven states have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to end the 2012 Obama-era program that protects immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children from the threat of deportation.
The Attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas on Tuesday challenging the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The seven-state coalition wants the court to stop the Department of Homeland Security from issuing or renewing future DACA permits.
“Our lawsuit is about the rule of law, not the wisdom of any particular immigration policy,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “Texas has argued for years that the federal executive branch lacks the power to unilaterally grant unlawfully present aliens lawful presence and work authorization. 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.”
The Trump administration attempted to rescind the DACA program by March, but several states filed lawsuits challenging that move. Lower courts have since stopped the administration from ending the Obama-era program.
The states said they are not asking the federal court to weigh in on any of the legal challenges to Trump’s DACA rescission, but are instead targeting former President Barack Obama’s executive action that created DACA.
“Underlying DACA is a dangerously broad conception of executive power — one that if left unchecked, could allow future executives to dismantle other duly enacted laws,” the lawsuit states. “The court must not allow that to occur.”
In arguing the DACA program is unlawful, the plaintiffs point to a preliminary injunction from the district court upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court that blocked the 2014 executive action which created Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents and an expanded version of DACA.
The Department of Homeland Security subsequently revoked DAPA in June, saying there is “no credible path forward to litigate the currently enjoined policy.”
In their lawsuit, the state attorneys general reference comments from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and claim DACA “suffers from the same legal defects as DAPA and that, if DACA were challenged, ‘the likeliest outcome is that it would be enjoined.’”
“That is precisely what the court should do here,” the lawsuit states. “This court has authority to immediately rescind and cancel all DACA permits currently in existence because they are unlawful.”
The lawsuit does not ask the federal government to remove any immigrants currently protected by DACA.
The legal challenge to DACA from the seven states stems from a promise Paxton made in June 2017 to sue if the Trump administration didn’t end the program. Paxton and nine other GOP-led states sent a letter to Sessions calling for the program to be rescinded.
In January, Paxton said in a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the Supreme Court he would file a lawsuit challenging DACA if the program remained in June.
