Dallas News
By Obed Manuel
August 02, 2018
The six-year-old program that protects immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and grants them two-year work permits is set for another day in court.
On Wednesday, a seven-state coalition led by Texas will request an injunction ordering the federal government to stop issuing new work permits to beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. More than 110,000 Texans are in the program and over 680,000 nationwide.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other state attorneys argue that DACA is unconstitutional and puts an undue financial burden on the states. Other states involved in the suit are Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Louisiana and Nebraska.
But immigration advocates say the lawsuit is six years too late. They say DACA’s existence for more than half a decade is enough to disprove the states’ arguments.
“Any assertion of irreparable damages is necessarily weak with regards to a program that has been implemented in Texas for six years, as throughout the country,” said Thomas Saenz, president and lead counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
In June, the Department of Justice said it would not defend DACA in court after Paxton sued in a South Texas federal court. MALDEF was allowed to intervene on behalf of 22 DACA recipients, six of whom are Texas residents, a few days later after it successfully argued before U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen that the Justice Department would not act in the best interest of the recipients.
MALDEF
@MALDEF
.@MALDEF is preparing to go to federal court on Aug. 8 on behalf of #Dreamers pushing back against Texas-led lawsuit challenging #DACA. Read this timeline for a history of significant developments in the long legal fight to protect these young immigrants. http://maldef.org/news/releases/History_of_Texas_Effort_Challenging_DACA/ …
7:32 PM – Jul 26, 2018
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Will DACA’s economic impact convince the judge?
Nina Perales, MALDEF’s vice president of litigation, said the Texas lawsuit’s sense of urgency falls apart because DACA recipients have been in the workforce for six years.
“They go to school. They go to work. They take care of family members,” Perales said. “They’re not creating any particular burden on the state. And in fact, they’re adding a great deal of benefit and have been doing so for six years, while Texas sat on its hands and didn’t file this lawsuit.”
Since the program was enacted in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama, hundreds of thousands of undocumented youths who were brought to the country as children have been able to legally enter the workforce, purchase homes and cars and pay their taxes, Perales said.
An estimated 91 percent of DACA recipients are employed, according a 2017 study by pro-immigration group FWD.us.
A separate economic impact study by the Center for American Progress estimated that the U.S. GDP would lose more than $430 billion over the next 10 years because of the gradual loss of workers. Texas would stand to lose an estimated $6.1 billion every year, according to that report.
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, various business groups and several border town mayors and leaders filed a brief last week warning that ending DACA would cost Texas more than $6 billion in economic activity during the next 10 years.
“The President is not free to override the will of the people and bypass elected representatives just because he disagrees on policy matters,” Marc Rylander, Paxton’s director of communications, said in a prepared statement responding to the brief. “As we’ve made clear time and again, ending new DACA applications along with renewals would allow this unlawful program to phase out over the next two years.”
Paxton’s office did not return The Dallas Morning News’ request for comment about the upcoming hearing. However, in a recent appearance on WFAA-TV’s Inside Texas Politics show, Paxton questioned whether DACA’s demise would result in a $6 billion loss to the state.
“I think they make a misleading argument,” he said. “We’re not talking about current Dreamers. We’re not talking about current DACA recipients. We’re talking about prospective (recipients) going forward. So it’s misleading to say that’s somehow going to have a huge impact on the economy.”
The upcoming hearing
Wednesday’s court hearing is before a judge with a history of being tough on immigration. Hanen is the same judge who in 2015 ordered an injunction against another Obama-era executive order known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA.
The program would have shielded almost 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation and provided them work permits, though it was never put in place. Texas, along with 25 other states, successfully sued to keep DAPA from rolling out. The case ended up before the Supreme Court. In June 2016, the Supreme Court issued a 4-4 deadlocked opinion that sent the case back to lower courts and left the program frozen.
Perales said while the arguments in next week’s case will be similar to those in the DAPA case, the judge will have to weigh DACA’s actual impact rather than the theoretical injuries states argued they would suffer in the DAPA case.
“We were able to ask the court to allow us to generate evidence about DACA and how it works that we believe strongly shows how different it is from DAPA and some of the flaws that the court purported to find in the DAPA case,” Perales said.
After U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in September 2017 that DACA would be phased out, several lawsuits were filed to stop the move.
Two federal judges, one in California and one in New York, halted the Trump Administration’s plan. The judges ordered immigration services to continue processing first-time applications that were filed before September and renewal applications indefinitely.
Saenz said Hanen’s ruling will not have more weight than the previous injunctions ordered by other federal judges.
“The Administration does not get to choose which injunctions it likes, which ones it doesn’t like and which ones to follow,” Saenz said.
Dallas-based appellate lawyer Chad Ruback said if Hanen does side with Texas and orders a halt to DACA permits, there’s nothing stopping the Trump Administration from following that order, which would be in line with its desire to end the program.
“I do not remember a situation where the exact same issue was pending before three courts of appeal at the exact same time, and that’s exactly where we will be if Judge Hanen issues the injunction that the seven-state coalition has asked him to issue,” Ruback said.
Ruback said he would expect the U.S. Supreme Court to step in at that point to provide direction about which court order to follow.
Despite Hanen’s reputation for being particularly tough on immigration-related cases, Ruback thinks the judge’s decision to allow MALDEF to represent DACA recipients indicates an open mind.
“That decision was not something the Trump Administration would’ve wanted,” Ruback said. “The case would’ve been a laughing stock if it was the state of Texas seeking to get rid of DACA up against the administration that’s also seeking to get rid of DACA.”
Dreamers are hopeful but still on edge
Ramiro Luna, a longtime Dallas-based immigration activist, said the DACA legal challenge is simply the latest unsettling policy advanced by the Trump administration.
“I’ve never felt so insecure or had such a limited sense of being able to gauge where things are going,” Luna said. “Much more than previous years, our community is really under attack.”
Luna said he and other advocates will continue to push for comprehensive immigration reform.
“DACA was something we fought for and earned through our advocacy and continuous effort,” Luna said. “The Dreamer community is resilient, and whatever comes our way we’ll have to overcome. We won’t allow injustice to prevail and let someone take away our freedom that we rightfully earned.”
Emma Chalott, press officer for the North Texas Dream Team, a local immigration reform advocacy group, said until the organization hears otherwise, its members will continue organizing workshops to help DACA beneficiaries renew their two-year work permits.
A DACA recipient herself, Chalott said she obtained a renewal in May that defers deportation action and allows her to work until May 2020.
“At this point, it just feels like we have to keep fighting — and we’ve been in fighting mode for years now,” Chalott said. “In the long run, we always knew that we would have to fight for a permanent solution.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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