Photo Courtesy of the State Attorney General’s Office
Schneiderman called President Trump’s decision to end DACA “cruel, inhumane, and devastating.”
By Michael V. Cusenza
State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman recently led a coalition of 16 attorneys general in filing suit to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals grantees. The lawsuit, which was filed last Wednesday afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, details how the Trump administration has violated the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution by discriminating against DREAMers of Mexican origin, who make up 78 percent of DACA recipients; violated Due Process rights; and harmed states’ residents, institutions, and economies.
“When bullies step up, you have to stand up to them and stand up to them quickly,” Schneiderman posted to his Twitter account. “That’s what we’re here to do.”
The Trump administration last week initiated the orderly phase out of DACA, a policy developed during the Obama administration that allows certain people who came to the United States as children, and meet several guidelines, to request consideration of deferred action from deportation for two years, subject to renewal. They are also eligible for work authorization.
“It’s very straightforward as a matter of constitutional law that you cannot enact a government policy if one of the major factors – doesn’t have to be the only factor – is discriminatory animus and if it has a disparate impact on a protected group,” Schneiderman said on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC. “Since the first days of his campaign, Donald Trump has flagrantly displayed an anti-Latino, particularly anti-Mexican, discriminatory animus – calling them rapists and murderers; disparaging a judge because of his Mexican heritage; saying Mexico only sends us the bad ones – and it clearly has a disparate impact, because 93 percent of the DACA grantees are Latino, and 78 percent are Mexicans. So if you wanted to do something to a group that you have been disparaging for a couple of years this would be a pretty good opportunity.”
The lawsuit was led by Schneiderman, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, and Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, and filed by a total of 16 attorneys general: New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia.
Schneiderman noted that New York is home to nearly 42,000 DACA grantees. There are approximately 800,000 DACA recipients across the country. According to the Center for American Progress, 97 percent of DACA grantees are employed or go to school; they pay $140 million annually in state and local taxes in New York, as the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy has detailed.
“Rescinding DACA will cause harm to hundreds of thousands of the states’ residents, injure state-run colleges and universities, upset the states’ workplaces, damage the States’ economies, hurt state-based companies, and disrupt the states’ statutory and regulatory interests,” according to the lawsuit.
“Immigration is the lifeblood of New York State. The Trump administration’s decision to end DACA is cruel, inhumane, and devastating to the 42,000 New Yorkers who have been able to come out of the shadows and live a full life as a result of the program,” Schneiderman added.
