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  • PRESS RELEASE
    04, October 2019
    Amicus Submitted to Support DACA Program, Highlights Racial Animus in Recision

Amicus Submitted to Support DACA Program, Highlights Racial Animus in Recision

Location
New York, NY

CONTACT: Christiaan Perez, [email protected], 212-739-7581

Statement of Juan Cartagena, President & General Counsel, LatinoJustice PRLDEF on the collaboration between the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and LatinoJustice PRLDEF to support the DACA program and to highlight how the Trump Administration believes its executive decisions cannot be challenged in court even whey they are motivated by race.
 
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and LatinoJustice PRLDEF filed an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in Regents of the University of California v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security which challenges the rescission of the DACA program that defers deportation for hundreds of thousands of. Here is an excerpt from our brief:

The Trump administration argues that to rescind a program that protects from removal 700,000 persons brought to the United States as children is not subject to judicial scrutiny even if the rescission was motivated by racial animus. That is a breathtaking argument. It would mean that Article III courts could not review DACA’s rescission even if the Administration formally stated that the rescission was motivated by a desire to remove as many Latinos as possible from our country. Nor could the courts review an official federal policy to deport only non-citizens of color.

That is not, and cannot be the law. The Fifth Amendment protects all persons living in the United States. If the equal protection component of that Amendment means anything, it means that racial discrimination must not infect federal policy judgments about whether to deport hundreds of thousands of individuals who came to the United States as children.”

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LatinoJustice PRLDEF works to create a more just society by using and challenging the rule of law to secure transformative, equitable and accessible justice, by empowering our community and by fostering leadership through advocacy and education. For more than 40 years, LatinoJustice PRLDEF has acted as an advocate against injustices throughout New York and beyond. To learn more about LatinoJustice, visit www.latinojustice.org. 

Read the Amicus here.