A.G. Underwood – Leading Coalition Of 20 AGs – Files Brief To Protect Dreamers And Pr

Amicus Brief in Texas v. U.S. Follows a Lawsuit to Protect DACA Led by AG Underwood, in which AGs Secured a Preliminary Injunction Blocking DACA Rescission

NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood – leading a coalition of 20 Attorneys General – filed an amicus brief seeking to protect Deferred Action for Early Childhood Arrivals (DACA) grantees.

The brief was filed in Texas v. United States, a case in the District Court for the Southern District of Texas, in which certain states are challenging the lawfulness of the DACA policy. The brief was led by the Attorneys General of New York and California, and was joined by the Attorneys General of Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.

“Federal courts from coast to coast have made clear: rescinding DACA is illegal and would cause irreparable harm to New York and states across the country,” said Attorney General Underwood. “DREAMers play by the rules, work hard, and pay taxes – and America is the only home they’ve ever known. DACA has provided them with a chance to come out of the shadows and live full lives, making our communities and our state better places for us all. We’ve already secured a major court win in our lawsuit earlier this year, and our coalition of Attorneys General won’t stop fighting on behalf of those we serve.”

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.

The brief filed by the Attorneys General argues that the Texas plaintiffs cannot make the legal showing required to obtain a preliminary injunction, and that the requested preliminary injunction should not be granted because it would conflict with the two existing preliminary injunctions issued by courts in the Northern District of California and the Eastern District of New York.

Specifically, the brief argues that the Texas plaintiffs cannot show a likelihood of success on the merits or that they will be irreparably harmed if DACA is not enjoined; and that the balance of the equities and the public interest weigh against granting the Texas plaintiffs’ requested preliminary injunction.

As the Attorneys General detail in their brief and prior lawsuits in defense of DACA, rescinding DACA wouldn’t just devastate the lives of the grantees who rely on the program; it would also harm employers and educational institutions that depend on the contributions of the DACA grantees, including state employers and state institutions – as two district courts have already concluded, noting that the States would suffer “staggering” and “irreversible” economic and social harms.

The loss of work authorization by DACA grantees would deprive the amici States of highly qualified employees, including faculty at state universities, nurses, information technology specialists, and public safety officers. State-run educational institutions would lose students and revenue, hindering their ability to promote critical programming. Additionally, state and local governments would lose out on the hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local taxes that DACA grantees pay each year. According to the Center for American Progress and the Immigrant Legal Resources Center, without DACA, the Gross Domestic Product would be $460.3 billion less over the next decade, while Social Security and Medicaid tax receipts would drop $24.6 billion.

“As two district courts have now found, ending DACA would injure the amici States as employers, providers of health services, and proprietors of public universities. It would also cause the amici States to lose many millions of dollars in tax revenue,” the brief states.

“In contrast, the harms asserted by the plaintiff States are either illusory or result from factors other than DACA, such as the mere presence of undocumented immigrants or the ancillary consequences of deferred action under decades-old federal regulations and policies. Indeed, the federal government began DACA in 2012, yet plaintiffs waited until 2018 to file this suit—a delay of nearly six years that undermines any claim of immediate, irreparable injury warranting a preliminary injunction. The nationwide injunction that plaintiffs seek is inappropriate for other reasons too: for example, that injunction would directly conflict with preliminary injunctions that two separate district courts have issued in favor of the amici States after rejecting DHS’s claims that DACA is unlawful.”



https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-u...-preserve-daca

Definitely going to Supreme Court now.

Yet another lawsuit, right ? or what's a brief?

Please someone make a list of how many lawsuits are going on....

This is good for us. No one wants the rug being pulled from under us.

God bless these states!

Texas vs. USA is the DAPA case with the updated eDaca and now the existing Daca attached to it, but this is only to save existing Daca in the pre-existing DAPA case...what the hell is this maneuvering from both sides??

The fed gvnmt won't defend it, so how exactly can the Supreme Court save this? Gorsuch is no friend of immigrants as far as I can see...

Supreme court isn't going to save DACA. The whole point is to delay the end of DACA. Hundred of thousands of dreamers have renewed their EAD since March. We are getting to the end of DACA pretty soon, so send in your renewal ASAP if you haven't.

If renewals are stopped come August 8, I guarantee you there will be some sort of extension in the spending bill in September...

Let's hope you're right. The optics of what the administration is doing on the border coupled with DREAMers losing their DACA isn't a good look for either party. Dems could have saved us in the last spending deal, but didn't and we all know the Republicans don't care.

So, maybe they can at the very least extend the program for a period since we know they don't actually want to solve the problem.