Texas A.G. Ken Paxton op-ed: President Trump Should Keep His Promise To DUMP DACA

US Border Patrol headquarters.  Denis Poroy/AP

If DACA is to remain intact, it must be issued through the lawmaking process in Congress, not by the executive power of the president.

Recently, I led a 10-state coalition asking President Trump to rescind the Obama Administration’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. I did so because the program represents an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power by the Executive Branch.

While in office, President Barack Obama repeatedly exhorted Congress to pass the DREAM Act, which would generally allow unlawfully present aliens who entered the country before age 16 to apply for lawful status. But Congress repeatedly refused, so Obama bypassed the legislature and unilaterally hatched DACA.

DACA has far-reaching implications, granting a renewable two-year term of lawful presence and work authorization for unlawfully present aliens who entered the country at least five years before DACA’s promulgation, arrived before age 16 and were 30 or younger as of DACA’s promulgation in June 2012.

DACA is similar to the Obama-era memo that created the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program in 2014, which also tried to bypass Congress and unilaterally confer lawful presence and work authorization on millions of unlawfully present aliens. But DAPA was blocked by the courts after Texas led a multi-state coalition challenging its constitutionality all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Department of Homeland Security finally revoked the 2014 DAPA program last month, but stated that the 2012 DACA program and some permits issued under the 2014 program would remain in effect.

Read the rest from Ken Paxton HERE.

If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.