The State of Texas is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to end the Obama era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Spokesman Marc Rylande says Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has joined nine other states in filing a 'friend of the court' brief urging the high court to overturn three lower court rulings that President Trump doesn't have the authority to end DACA, which allows young people who came into the country as minors with their illegal immigrant parents to remain in the U.S.
Rylander points out that DACA was implemented by Executive Order by President Obama in 2012, at the same time that another program also approved by the Obama Administration, which was designed to allow the parents of children who are citizens by birthright but who themselves are illegally in the U.S. virtue to also remain in the country. That program was quickly declared unconstitutional by the courts.
"The Trump Administration's decision to wind down DACA, because DACA is just as legally flawed as Obama's Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program," he said.
Ending DACA is one of President Trump's major efforts to try to reduce incentives for people to enter the country illegally.
"The Department of Justice and the courts have all determined that DACA is an illegal program," Rylander said. "So it is absurd to require the President to go through a lengthy rule-making process to stop breaking the law."
There are an estimated 125,000 DACA recipients in Texas. Supporters of the program say many of these young people were brought to the U.S. as babies or toddlers, and have no memory of their native country, don't speak the language, and have no connections to that nation, and that deporting them to a strange country would be cruel and inhuman.
Observers say the President's position has a good chance of succeeding in the new, conservative dominated Supreme Court.