Fifteen US states and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit in New York challenging President Donald Trump’s plan to end a programme protecting young immigrants from deportation.
The suit was first announced by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Wednesday, who called Trump’s act ‘a dark time for our country’.
Plaintiffs include New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia.
Immigration activists protest the Trump administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on September 6 in Newark, New Jersey
The suit was first announced by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (seen above Wednesday), who called Trump’s act ‘a dark time for our country’
It comes as protesters took to the streets to demonstrate against Tuesday’s decision.
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced then that the programme, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA, will end in six months to give Congress time to find a legislative solution for the immigrants.
The participants were brought to the US illegally as children or came with families who overstayed visas.
Those already enrolled in DACA remain covered until their permits expire.
If their permits expire before March 5 2018, they are eligible to renew them for another two years as long as they apply by October 5.
However, the programme is not accepting new applications.
Opponents of the programme said they are pleased with the Trump administration’s decision.
They called DACA an unconstitutional abuse of executive power, but proponents of the programme said the move by Mr Trump was cruel.
Mr Ferguson said the action violates the due process rights of the immigrants.
People at the Intermodal Center in Erie, Pa., protest President Donald Trump’s decision to rescind former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy
Trump waves during his arrival at Bismarck Municipal Airport on Wednesday. He was in North Dakota to promote his tax overhaul plan
He said he fears the information the immigrants provided to the government to participate in DACA could be used against them.
‘It’s outrageous, it’s not right,’ an emotional Mr Ferguson said at a news conference in Seattle.
‘As attorney general for the state of Washington, I have a hammer, it’s the law.’
Dreamer Faride Cuevas also spoke at the press conference saying ‘we are just as American as your children’.
Dreamer Faride Cuevas spoke at the press conference announcing the lawsuit on Wednesday saying ‘we are just as American as your children’
Washington Governor Jay Inslee joined Mr Ferguson at the news conference and said ‘this is one more of a long train of abuses that this president has attempted to foist on this great nation’.
Earlier this year, Mr Ferguson sued Mr Trump over the initial travel ban, which resulted in a federal judge blocking nationwide enforcement.
Meanwhile, California’s attorney general says a separate lawsuit he plans to file over the Trump administration’s plan to end protections for young immigrants will mirror the legal arguments made in the suit already filed by the 15 states and the District of Columbia.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, said Wednesday he is going ahead with his own lawsuit because one in four participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program lives in California and the state will suffer the greatest harm from its termination. He says he’ll file the suit soon.
Becerra says he’s been talking with fellow attorneys general for months about what to do if DACA is terminated and that the legal grounds of his case will be similar to the one filed earlier in the day by the other states.
That lawsuit calls the move by Trump an unconstitutional culmination of his commitments to punish people with Mexican roots.
Becerra says ending DACA will harm the people it protects along with California’s economy and higher education system.