DREAM Act Portal Forum - A group of Republican attorneys general is picking a fight with Trump on immigration

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A group of Republican attorneys general is picking a fight with Trump on immigration

Quote:

Despite their frustrations, however, few have directly picked a fight with the president about DACA. (The anti-immigration group ALIPAC withdrew its endorsement of him in May over the issue, but they’re not considered to be a major player either among immigration hawks or in the conservative movement.) And elected Republican officials have generally been hesitant to directly criticize Trump’s actions. But now a group of them are calling him out directly on one of his own signature issues.

Will the threat work? It’s unclear.

Legally, it’s a little weird to cite the case against DAPA as evidence that DACA is unconstitutional; while the Fifth Circuit’s decision in that case was pretty harsh on DACA, it also took pains to distinguish the two programs in a way that made DACA seem more defensible. And since the Trump administration hasn’t been shy about stripping immigrants of their DACA protections, and even deporting them, it might have an easier time arguing that DACA isn’t just a backdoor way to grant legal status.

On the other hand, the DAPA lawsuit made it pretty clear that federal Southern District of Texas Judge Andrew Hanen, and the Fifth Circuit, is skeptical of protecting groups of unauthorized immigrants as a general rule. It seems pretty likely both would side against DACA if they got the chance. And if Paxton leads another state lawsuit, he’d likely start it in Hanen’s district — where a favorable ruling is nearly guaranteed.

Politically, the fight is tougher. DREAMers are the most politically sympathetic unauthorized immigrants there are — they’re US-raised, fluent in English, well-connected. There’s a reason the DACA program didn’t get the kind of legal battle when it was introduced in 2012 that the expansions of deferred action would get two years later — few Republicans wanted to take a stand against people who’d graduated from American schools and were starting American careers.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...rs-immigration