Freedom from DACA

            The topic of discussion for this Freedom Friday concerns the latest action on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Sometimes known as “Dreamers,” DACA protects from deportation about 700,000 illegal immigrants who were brought to the USA as children illegally.

            Barack Obama started the program with an Executive Order, and Donald Trump has the authority to rescind it with one. However, rogue judges keep getting in his way of doing so. Trump attempted to end DACA last year, but three federal judges blocked his efforts to repeal the program and put the problem in the hands of Congress.

            Now state governments are taking action against DACA. Seven states with GOP leadership majorities filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday in an attempt to end DACA. The lawsuit was filed in a Texas federal court by Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia. The states are requesting in their court filing that the court end DACA. “This court has authority to immediately rescind and cancel all DACA permits currently in existence because they are unlawful.” 

            Ken Paxton, the Attorney General for Texas, explains that the lawsuit had to be multi-state because “three activist federal judges” blocked Trump’s order to phase out the program. In a written statement, Paxton says the following.

Our lawsuit is about the rule of law, not the wisdom of any particular immigration policy. Texas has argued for years that the federal executive branch lacks the power to unilaterally grant unlawfully present aliens lawful presence and work authorization.

            Immigration activists are, of course, speaking out against the lawsuit. After calling the states “retrograde states,” one activist seems to think that time makes an illegal executive order legal. They are questioning the lawsuit because it comes “nearly six years after DACA was introduced and many weeks after three federal courts” halted Trump’s attempt to rescind it. Another activist claims that the Dreamers should be allowed to stay in the US because they were so young when they came and know no other home.

            However, the lawsuit does not deal with why the illegal immigrants are here, how old they were when they arrived, or how they came. It apparently deals only with the legally of Barack’s executive order. “This lawsuit is emphatically about the rule of law. The policy merits of immigration laws are debated in and decided by Congress.”

            This writer says, “Good for these seven states!” In the first place, they filed their lawsuit in Texas where there are fewer liberal judges. The states also represent different parts of the nation: West Virginia and South Carolina on the East Coast; Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana in the South; Nebraska from the Midwest, and Texas. In addition, they claim that the lawsuit is strictly about the rule of law and which branch of the federal government has the authority to create immigration laws. Hopefully, this lawsuit will be handled quickly and settle once and for all the legality of DACA!