Attorney General Ken Paxton gave this statement on today’s United States Supreme Court argument on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program:
“This case is about the rule of law. Congress has the sole authority to write immigration laws, and it has repeatedly rejected attempts to enact the polices embodied in DACA and DAPA; however, in a lawless exercise of executive power, the Obama administration attempted to bypass our elected representatives and put those policies in place by executive action,” said Attorney General Paxton. “The president’s duty is to ensure that the law is faithfully executed, not to re-write laws with which he disagrees. We hope the Supreme Court will recognize the necessity of the Trump administration’s decision to rescind this unlawful program.”
In August, Attorney General Paxton led a 13-state coalition in an amicus brief filed with the United States Supreme Court supporting the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the DACA program. When created via executive memo in 2014, DACA unilaterally granted lawful presence and access to work permits to over 1.7 million unlawfully-present aliens in defiance of laws enacted by Congress.