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Democrats Threaten to Sue President Over DACA

President Trump has turned his back on hundreds of thousands of children and young Americans who came forward and put their trust in government, says California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D)
Protestors sit on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower to speak out against the administration’s decision  to end the DACA program on Sept. 5.
Protestors sit on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower to speak out against the administration’s decision  to end the DACA program on Sept. 5.

Democratic attorneys general across the country have threatened to sue US President Donald Trump over his decision Tuesday to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, opening another front in the growing legal war between blue states and the Republican administration.

The Trump administration said Tuesday it was ending an Obama-era program allowing young people who came to the country illegally as children to live in America free from fear of deportation.

"The program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration is being rescinded," Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in a televised statement.

In public statements and letters to the Trump administration, 20 attorneys general urged Trump not to follow through on threats to end the five-year-old program, which allows those brought into the country illegally as children to work and live free of the threat of deportation, The Hill reported.

“Ending DACA is un-American, and it’s going to threaten the health and safety of many individuals,” New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas (D) told The Hill. “Various attorneys general from across the country are preparing to defend DACA recipients. The constitution applies [to them] as well in terms of equal protection and due process.”

There are an estimated 800,000 people covered by the DACA program, first implemented by the Obama administration in June 2012. Seven thousand of those live in New Mexico, Balderas said.

The top legal officers in three states —California, New York and Washington— pledged to take legal action against the Trump administration to defend the program.

“President Trump has turned his back on hundreds of thousands of children and young Americans who came forward and put their trust in government,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said Tuesday. “But in terminating DACA, the Trump administration has also violated the Constitution and federal law.”

Trump’s decision Tuesday came after 10 Republican attorneys general threatened to sue the administration to halt the DACA program.

They said they would amend a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of Texas that successfully challenged another Obama administration initiative, the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans —or DAPA— program.

A federal judge placed a temporary injunction on the DAPA program in 2015 while the lawsuit proceeded. In June, the Trump administration announced it would not implement the program.

The Democratic threats of legal action are the latest in a wave of lawsuits filed by blue state legal officers meant to challenge the Trump administration. Several states filed suit to halt a proposed ban on travel from six majority Muslim nations, blocking one of the Trump administration’s first actions after taking office.

Democrats are contemplating legal action to halt the administration’s decision to halt the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era environmental rule meant to limit greenhouse emissions. And attorneys general from states where marijuana is legal have promised to sue if the Justice Department begins cracking down on drug enforcement.

***Cruel, Self-Defeating and Wrong

Former president Barack Obama came out against President Trump’s decision to end the DACA program, saying a “shadow has been cast over some of our best and brightest young people once again.”

Obama wrote in a lengthy Facebook post that he decided to create DACA during his presidency because “it made no sense to expel talented, driven, patriotic young people from the only country they know solely because of the actions of their parents.”

“To target these young people is wrong —because they have done nothing wrong. It is self-defeating —because they want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love. And it is cruel,” he wrote.

Obama called for congress to act quickly to pass legislation to protect those who would be impacted by the end of the program.

"It is precisely because this action is contrary to our spirit, and to common sense, that business leaders, faith leaders, economists, and Americans of all political stripes called on the administration not to do what it did today," Obama wrote.

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