There is “no question” the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is legal, some 100 law professors have written in a letter to Donald Trump, calling on him to continue the program despite a legal threat from beleaguered Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and nine other anti-immigrant state leaders to sue him if he does not announce he will end the program by Sept. 5.
Paxton and the nine leaders are disguising their full-throated support of Trump’s racist, immoral mass deportation force with claims about DACA’s constitutionality, but the fact is that the issue of DACA’s legality has already been settled because “the U.S. government has repeatedly — and successfully—defended DACA against constitutional challenges,” notes the American Civil Liberties Union. “Indeed, every legal challenge to the DACA program has failed.”
The letter to Trump, signed by law experts from Harvard Law School, Rutgers Law School, U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Yale Law School, and dozens of other universities and colleges states that the U.S. Constitution gives a president the authority “to target some immigration cases for removal and to use prosecutorial discretion favorably in others.” So if Trump ends DACA, the experts write, it will have been a “political decision, not a legal one”:
“The legal authority for the Executive Branch to operate DACA 2012 is crystal clear. As such, choices about its future would constitute a policy and political decision, not a legal one. As the administration decides how best to address DACA 2012, we hope that the legal foundation and history for this policy is addressed wisely and that decisions on the future of DACA 2012 are made humanely.”
If DACA is rescinded, some 800,000 immigrant youth will lose their work permits and protection from deportation, cutting off their ability to support themselves and their families, and ultimately making them vulnerable to deportation. Many of these immigrant youth came to the U.S. so young that they remember no other country but the United States as their home.
“In our view, there is no question that DACA 2012 is a lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” states the letter. “Our conclusions are based on years of experience in the field and a close study of the U.S. Constitution, administrative law,immigration statutes, federal regulations and case law.” When your work experience is Trump Steaks and Celebrity Apprentice, maybe it’s best to listen to the experts.