The Attempt to Trump DACA:
The Constitutional and Administrative Limits of President Trump’s Rescission of DACA

 Date:                     February 15, 2018

Time:                     3:30 – 4:30PT/4:30 – 5:30MT

Location:              Menard Law Building, Room 108, Moscow

Idaho Law and Justice Learning Center, Room 135, Boise

Speaker: Luis Cortes-Romero, Esq.

Moderator: Kate Evans, Associate Professor, University of Idaho College of Law

Luis Cortes Romero is an alumnus of the University of Idaho College of Law, and one of the lead attorneys, alongside Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, Professor Laurence Tribe, and Professor Leah Litman, in Garcia v. United States of America, 3:17-cv-05380 (N.D. Cal.) – the companion case in the national DACA litigation.  He will discuss the litigation that led to the court order preventing President Trump from rolling back the DACA program, the future of DACA at the Supreme Court, the situation facing DREAMers today, and his path through the legal profession. Cortes Romero’s work was recently profiled by PBS News Hour.

 Background:

In 2012, the Obama administration created the DACA program through policy statements. The program offered work permits and temporary protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the United States as children. As of 2017, there were an estimated 800,000 DACA recipients. On September 5, 2017, President Trump announced that he was ending the program in March unless congress acts within the next six months.

Cortes Romero represented six individuals who were brought into the U.S. at young ages and currently live, work, and study in California in their challenge to President Trump’s announcement. One is a practicing attorney, one is a special education teacher, and four others attend graduate school. The plaintiffs argued that they each relied on the government’s promises that any information they provided in the application process would not be used for immigration enforcement, and that barring criminal activity or fraud in their DACA applications, DACA recipients would be able to renew their status and keep their benefits. They also argued that the revocation of DACA is fueled by President Trump’s anti-Mexican racial animus evidenced in his past statements and actions. Moreover, the plaintiffs stated that the government took “affirmative steps to reduce the protections applicable to information provided in connection with the DACA program” as evidenced by a January 2017 Executive Order mandating that all agencies “ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.”

On January 9 2018, a federal district court judge in California issued a nationwide preliminary injunction in one of the related cases, ordering that DACA remain in effect on the same terms and conditions that existed prior to Trump’s rescission.  The ruling has created a new opportunity for young people all over the country to obtain work permits and pursue their education without the immediate threat of deportation.

Application for 1.0 hours of CLE credit pending.