Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading the charge to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era amnesty program for illegal immigrants who first entered the country as minors.
Texas is one of seven states suing the Trump administration to end the program. That number will likely grow in the coming days and weeks.
While President Donald Trump stated last year that he officially wanted to end DACA, he deferred this responsibility to Congress, who in turn has done nothing.
The basis for the lawsuit stems from the idea that when DACA was enacted by former President Barack Obama, it was done so unilaterally by the Executive Branch, and thus it is unconstitutional.
“The executive unilaterally conferred lawful presence and work authorization on otherwise unlawfully present aliens” the lawsuit states.
A similar program, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, or DAPA, was blocked by a lawsuit also led by Paxton in 2016 that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
The issue of rescinding DACA became much more urgent after a judge on the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the program must continue. Paxton drew attention to the activist judges doing as much as they could to save DACA, saying “unelected federal judges are forcing the Trump administration to leave an unlawful program in place indefinitely as legal challenges drag on.”
While Paxton in the past had threatened to sue the Trump Administration should they uphold DACA, Paxton backed off after Trump announced that he intended to repeal the program. However, the decision by some federal judges to continue the program has pushed Texas and the six other states to move along with their lawsuit.
