The support for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients as the case around the program heads to the Supreme Court next month continues to grow, with nearly 160 businesses and business associations, nearly 200 colleges and universities, and 80 prosecutors and law enforcement leaders filing legal briefs calling on justices to allow young immigrants to keep their vital protections.
In their legal briefing, 18 major business associations and 140 companies including Airbnb, Ben & Jerry’s, Chobani, Netflix, and Target tell the Supreme Court that the national GDP stands to lose up to $460.3 billion should the Trump administration succeed in having justices do its dirty work of ending the program, “and tax revenues will be reduced by approximately $90 billion, over the next decade.”
“Rescinding DACA will harm not only individual recipients and their families, friends, and co-workers,” the brief states, “but also the many U.S. businesses that count on them to help fuel continued innovation and economic growth.” In its own briefing filed separately last week, Apple echoed both the human and fiscal costs of ending DACA, saying that “Our interest in this case is simple: We are distressed at the prospect of ripping our DACA colleagues from the fabric of our company.”
In a second legal briefing in support of DACA recipients, 80 prosecutors and law enforcement leaders from across the nation said that keeping DACA alive is in fact a matter of public safety. “When the law pushes individuals into the shadows,” said Salt Lake County district attorney Sim Gill, “it creates opportunities for abuse, fear, and exploitation.”
The administration’s racist policies have already have devastating effects on public safety, with a report earlier this year finding a nearly 80% surge in abusers weaponizing deportation agents against their victims. ”Police cannot prevent or solve crimes if victims or witnesses are unwilling to talk to them or prosecutors,” the briefing states, “because of concerns that they, their loved ones, or their neighbors will face adverse immigration consequences.”
In two other briefings, nearly 200 colleges and universities said that the “rescission of DACA will severely harm the life prospects of these students and alumni, adversely affect our nation’s higher education institutions, undermine the many years of investments that colleges and universities made to support DACA recipients, and sap our higher education communities of needed talent, diversity, and leadership.”
Ending DACA, Stanford and nearly two dozen universities said in the second brief, “would force future scholars, innovators, and leaders to choose between withdrawing to the margins of our society and national economy or returning to countries that they have never called home.” It’s also about letting young immigrants and their families just lives their lives here in peace. “This issue is a moral one,” Apple’s briefing said. “Our country made a deal with a highly vulnerable population interested in a bright future, and we should keep that deal.”