Since its establishment by executive order in 2012, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has protected hundreds of thousands of undocumented persons who arrived in the United States as children from deportation. The oldest DACA recipients are now in their 30s, and many have children - in fact, over 250,000 of them - in addition to extended families, colleagues, churches, and communities.
In September 2017, the Trump Administration rescinded DACA, which would have had the effect of immediately terminating work authorization and putting individuals in jeopardy of removal.
Plaintiffs filed suit in California and New York, and APSAC has supported the DACA defenders in each case, beginning in March 2018 with a brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the University of California Regents. These cases ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court, where APSAC again supported the DACA defenders - this time leading a large group of 35 additional child advocacy and pediatric organizations and medical experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Center on Law and Social Policy.
In filing this brief, APSAC strongly opposes the termination of DACA, a critically important protection afforded to persons who arrived in the United States as children and have made lives and families here in the only home they know. The trauma that is being inflicted on the children of DACA recipients by the threat of their parents' deportation is cruel and serves no meaningful public policy purpose. Over time, these children and the communities in which they live will suffer greatly from this pointless infliction of harm.
APSAC stands united with a broad range of organizations, those who joined our brief and those who joined the many, many other amicus briefs in support of DACA, in insisting that we count the human cost of rescission and choose a better path - one that will keep families together and their children thriving. In this, we are all Dreamers.
Read the full brief below:
The statements of additional amicus parties are available in the Appendix below: