University of California president Janet Napolitano has joined immigrant youth, 16 states, and Washington, D.C. in suing Donald Trump over his cowardly decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program:
Lawyers for Ms. Napolitano and the school system she leads, which serves 238,000 students across ten campuses, filed a lawsuit on Friday in federal court accusing Trump officials of violating administrative procedures and constitutional due process requirements by abruptly ending the program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Having done so, she says in the lawsuit, Mr. Trump harmed the thousands of undocumented students whose attendance at her universities is made possible by the work permits that they receive through DACA. And she says that ending the program will negatively affect the university system, which stands to lose the academic and cultural benefits those students bring.
Napolitano’s lawsuit is unique from the other litigation against Donald Trump—as former secretary of Homeland Security under the Obama administration, she helped establish DACA following a successful campaign—and relentless pressure—from undocumented immigrant youth.
The New York Times:
It is her signature on the June 15, 2012 document that established the DACA program. In the three-page memorandum, she argues that the nation’s immigration laws were not designed to “remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language.”
“I’m really outraged on behalf of our students, who have done everything that has been asked of them,” Napolitano told the New York Times about the lawsuit. “Most of them know only the United States as home. To say that they have to be thinking about possible deportation is wrong on the law, inconsistent with our value and bad immigration policy.”
Stephen Legomsky, a professor at the Washington University School of Law and a former general counsel at the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, said “I definitely think this lawsuit stands a good chance of succeeding. So much is going to turn on which judge they land”:
In Friday’s lawsuit, Ms. Napolitano argues that by rescinding her 2012 memorandum – even with a six-month delay in implementation — Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions violated rules under the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires the government to provide public notice and seek comment from affected parties before revoking a significant policy.
Ms. Napolitano’s lawsuit, which was filed in Federal District Court in Northern California, also alleges that the decision to rescind her DACA memo was “arbitrary and capricious” because the Trump administration officials did not offer an expansive legal argument justifying their decision.
“If the agency wants to change the rules, they need to explain why,” said Alexander A. Berengaut, a lawyer for Covington & Burling, a law firm which is representing Ms. Napolitano and the university system.
The lawsuit contends that the Trump administration needed to provide a more substantial justification for ending the DACA program because those who enrolled in it made long-term decisions like enrolling in college or getting a loan based on the assumption that it would continue.
And finally, the suit alleges a violation of the constitutional due process rights of DACA enrollees.
As immigrant rights group America’s Voice noted, this is the latest effort from educators to protect the DACA program. A bipartisan group of five former secretaries of Education have said that “taking away DACA without a legislative path forward isn’t just bad for the country. It would violate a promise our nation made to these earnest young people.”