The University of California filed suit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its acting secretary Elaine Duke on Friday, claiming President Donald Trump’s repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program violates the the rights of DACA recipients.
The lawsuit asks the courts to halt Trump’s repeal because of it being unlawful and unconstitutional. The complaint alleges the repeal did not follow the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), as it had no notice and comment period, and was not supported by “reasoned decision making,” among other violations.
“Neither I, nor the University of California, take the step of suing the federal government lightly, especially not the very agency that I led,” UC President Janet Napolitano said in a press release. “It is imperative, however, that we stand up for these vital members of the UC community.”
The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California with the pro bono support of Covington & Burling LLP, calls the repeal “unconstitutional, unjust, and unlawful.”
There are about 4,000 undocumented students attending the UC, many of them DACA recipients. The UC is the first of any university to file suit against Trump’s decision to repeal the program, according to a UC press release issued this morning.
“To arbitrarily and capriciously end the DACA program, which benefits our country as a whole, is not only unlawful, it is contrary to our national values and bad policy,” Napolitano said in a press release.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is reported to be preparing his own lawsuit against the Trump administration to be released later this week.
“California will sue the Trump administration over its termination of the DACA program for one simple reason,” Becerra said to the Sacramento Bee. “Our state has become the world’s sixth largest economy due in part to the success of over 200,000 Dreamers whose livelihoods have been put at risk by President Trump’s wrong-headed decision on DACA.”
City on a Hill Press will continue to update this story as it develops.
