President Donald Trump has tried to phase out DACA, but the effort is stymied in the courts and likely to end up before the Supreme Court. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Texas, 6 other states sue Trump administration over DACA program

Texas and six other states filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday challenging the constitutionality of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The 137-page lawsuit is the latest legal twist over the fate of DACA, which grants work permits to roughly 694,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.


President Donald Trump moved to phase out the program in September after attorneys general from Texas and nine other states threatened to dispute in court the legality of the executive-branch program. At the time, Trump said he hoped to reach agreement with Congress on statutory language to maintain DACA. Subsequently, though, Trump imposed multiple conditions on codifying DACA that congressional Democrats rejected, including new limits on legal immigration.

Under Trump's phaseout plan, DACA protections were set to begin expiring in large numbers starting in March. But district court judges in San Francisco, New York and the District of Columbia ordered the administration to restart DACA renewals and even, possibly, to start accepting new applications for the program. The matter is expected to end up before the Supreme Court.

Speaking at a press conference in Austin on Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the lawsuit was necessary because “three activist federal judges” blocked Trump’s planned phaseout of DACA. Paxton said the judges forced Trump “to leave an unlawful program in place indefinitely as legal challenges drag on.”

The Texas suit argues that DACA overstepped the authority of the executive branch — the same argument Texas made successfully against a 2014 program that broadened deportation relief to the parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.

“This Court has authority to immediately rescind and cancel all DACA permits currently in existence because they are unlawful,” the states argue in the lawsuit. But they would agree to a solution, they said, that blocked the administration from issuing or renewing DACA permits, “effectively phasing out the program within two years.”

The Homeland Security Department, whose officials are named in the complaint filed Tuesday by Texas and backing states, said it does not comment on pending litigation.

Paxton said his coalition of attorneys general would urge the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to declare DACA unconstitutional. "Left intact, DACA sets a dangerous precedent by giving the executive branch sweeping authority to ignore the laws enacted by Congress and change our nation’s immigration laws to suit a president's own preferences," Paxton said.

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Joining Texas in the litigation were Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia — a smaller group than Paxton put together in a June letter threatening to sue over DACA. The earlier letter was signed by attorneys general from all six states plus Idaho, Tennessee and Kansas. Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, a Republican, also joined that group.

The plaintiffs hope the new litigation will follow the path of the 2014 lawsuit against the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program, known as DAPA. In June 2016, the Supreme Court deadlocked over DAPA and an extension of DACA, which would have offered work permits to millions of undocumented immigrants.

The high court — shorthanded after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia four months earlier — split 4-4, leaving in place a lower court ruling that blocked the initiatives from moving forward.

Todd Schulte, president of the pro-immigration FWD.us, said Tuesday that the new litigation reinforces the need for Congress to take “immediate action to bring certainty for DREAMers, their families, friends, and coworkers.”