N.J. just jumped into the national immigration fight over DACA
N.J. just jumped into the national immigration fight over DACA
June 26, 2018
S. P. Sullivan
A judge in Texas has cleared the way for New Jersey to jump into a legal battle that could decide the fate of DACA, the federal policy at the center of the national immigration debate.
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal's office was granted permission Monday to intervene in a federal lawsuit brought by seven southern states challenging the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which was implemented by former President Barack Obama and faces and uncertain future under President Donald Trump.
The lawsuit, being led by Texas officials, asserts the Obama administration overstepped its authority by going around Congress in creating DACA, which allows those who entered the country illegally as children to avoid deportation.
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The federal government is the main defendant in the suit. But under the Trump administration, the Department of Justice signaled in legal filings that it agreed with the plaintiff states that the policy was unlawful.
That prompted Grewal, who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in January, to seek to intervene in the case in May. The attorney general said in a Twitter post Tuesday morning that "DOJ won't defend DACA, so we will."
U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen's ruling effectively makes the state of New Jersey a defendant in the federal suit. Several individual undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors, known as Dreamers, have also intervened as defendants.
Attorneys for New Jersey agued the state would be harmed if DACA were struck down, claiming it would impede state efforts at "preventing family separation, maintaining public health and enforcing the State's criminal laws," among other arguments.
The Attorney General's Office estimates New Jersey is home to some 53,000 people eligible for DACA, including more than 17,000 who have been granted DACA status.
The office claims in court filings that 15,900 of those are currently employed and 7,800 are in school. If DACA were terminated, state attorneys claim, New Jersey would lose as much as $19 million each year in taxes.
Federal officials have argued in court papers that the policy is an "open-ended circumvention of immigration laws."
The Texas suit is one of several legal battles in courtrooms around the country which involve DACA or other federal immigration policies.
Under former Gov. Chris Christie, New Jersey largely stayed out of the national fight, but Murphy and Grewal have since signed the Garden State on to multi-state challenges mounted by left-leaning states.
Trump has given federal lawmakers mixed signals on the policy, often stating that a permanent fix for those who were brought into the country illegally as small children would have to be part of a larger immigration compromise that would include the construction of a border wall.
https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ss...immigrati.html
