President Donald Trump said he both thinks and hopes a lawsuit to end DACA – a program he had previously tried kill himself only to be stymied in the courts – will be successful. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Image Trump praises Texas AG's lawsuit to repeal DACA

President Donald Trump on Thursday praised a lawsuit led by Texas to repeal an Obama-era program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, saying he hopes the legal action is “successful.”

The lawsuit , which was filed against the Trump administration over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in May, was argued in federal court in Texas on Wednesday by the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton.


“Ken just filed a very interesting lawsuit, which I think is going to be very successful,” Trump said on Thursday in New Jersey during a roundtable discussion on prison reform that included several governors and state attorneys general. “I hope it’s going to be successful.”

Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia have also signed on to the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas.

In the action, the states argue that DACA leads to additional costs in health care, law enforcement and education, in addition to increased competition for jobs.

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The president later went on to ask Paxton how the case was looking, and the Texas attorney general said the hearing on Wednesday “went quite well.”

“We will see what the judge says,” Paxton said. “We know we are right on the law and right under the Constitution. We are confident that things are going to go on the right way.”

“It’s true,” the president replied.

In an op-ed published Thursday, Paxton argued that because DACA did not get congressional approval, it “represents a dangerous exercise of executive power, which, if left unchecked, allows the president to set aside any duly enacted law."

Approximately 694,000 Dreamers are enrolled in the DACA program.