The University of California released a statement Monday in support of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s lawsuit against the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
Becerra filed the lawsuit in federal court Monday, alleging that the repeal violates DACA recipients’ rights to due process. The suit alleges that recipients were told that releasing their personal information to the federal government would not be used against them for deportation, but with the end of DACA, many fear that that is no longer the case. The university issued a press release Monday afternoon to express its “full support” of Becerra’s lawsuit.
“Dreamers, the largest group of DACA recipients in our country, are valued members of our California communities,” the university said in the statement. “UC will work together with our state government to ensure that these young people remain able to continue the productive lives they have established in the only nation they know as home.”
The Trump administration’s ruling has been met with public unrest throughout the East Bay. According to the campus’s statement, California is home to more than 200,000 DACA recipients. A crowd of about 100 gathered on Sproul Plaza on Sept. 5 to participate in a rally organized by local activist group By Any Means Necessary. About 1,000 community members also assembled in Oakland on Sunday to protest the repeal of DACA.
UC President Janet Napolitano and the UC Board of Regents also filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration Friday over the DACA repeal. Napolitano, who helped create the the DACA program in 2012 as United States Homeland Security secretary, expressed concern about the detrimental impact its rescission would have on students.
“(The university’s lawsuit) asks the court to prevent the rescission on the grounds that abruptly ending the program on little more than an unreasoned presidential whim is unlawful and unconstitutional,” the university said in its statement.