The American Civil Liberties Union announced Monday that it is seeking to determine whether states have been conspiring with Attorney General Jeff Sessions to put an end to an Obama-era policy that offers some immigrants protection against deportation.
In June, the attorneys general of Arkansas, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia, as well as the governor of Idaho, sent a joint letter to Sessions threatening to expand an existing lawsuit filed in Texas that aims to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The ACLU filed public records requests in those 10 states, seeking, the organization said, “to uncover any coordination by state officials and members of the Trump administration to take down the DACA program.”
DACA allows some foreign minors who came to the United States as children to apply for a two-year deportation deferral and work visa, subject to renewal. It affects nearly 800,000 people.
“We’ve filed these requests because the Trump administration continues to speak out of both sides of its mouth on DACA, leaving the future of the program in doubt. President [Donald] Trump has described Dreamers as ‘absolutely incredible kids‘ who have ‘worked here‘ and ‘gone to school here’ assuring them that they ‘should rest easy‘ about being allowed to stay in the country,” the statement reads. “At the same time, other administration officials have long opposed DACA—including Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”
