LOS ANGELES – Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) issued the following statement in response to the Trump administration’s new memo that seeks to eliminate new applications of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and limit renewals.
“Today’s memorandum from Acting Secretary Chad Wolf demonstrates that Donald Trump remains in thrall to Stephen Miller’s white nationalist philosophy and uninterested in any serious analysis of legitimate policy considerations. The memorandum purports to respond to the Supreme Court’s June 18 decision, but eschews real analysis in favor of a punitive stance toward a group of immigrants with tremendous support across the entire nation. While seeming to concede something to the hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients who daily serve our nation, Trump’s refusal to accept or process new applications for DACA and his insistence on halving the term of DACA renewals would harm the national interest and the national economy.
“The memorandum is thus very much a Wolf in sheep’s clothing. There is plenty of bleating – in favor of empirically unsupported canards about ‘messages’ sent to Congress, future potential immigrants, and the general public – but no substantive analysis of even the specific issues raised by the Supreme Court. The value of forbearance with regard to a group that any reasonable, thinking person would regard as extremely low enforcement priorities goes unexamined. The extent of reliance by young people raised and educated in this country receives only cursory and conclusory attention.
“In the end, the memorandum, which will face significant challenges in court, says more about the character – proclivities and incompetences — of a failed administration than about the merits of any serious immigration policy.
“Donald Trump shows no greater maturity in response to a Supreme Court loss today than at the beginning of his administration. The suffering – individual and communal – that ensues, as a result, is truly deplorable.”
FIND A TIMELINE OF CHALLENGES TO DACA HERE