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In Grand Rapids U. of California president explains Trump DACA lawsuit

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The University of California has sued the Trump administration over its decision to end a program protecting hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation. University of California president, Janet Napolitano, is in Grand Rapids where she explained the reasoning for the lawsuit.

The University of California filed the lawsuit against the Trump administration today in federal court in San Francisco. It includes university president Janet Napolitano as a plaintiff.

She was Homeland Security secretary under the Obama administration and helped implement its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program also known as DACA.

“We base our lawsuit on the fact that the decision was a violation of law, specifically the administrative procedures act and a violation of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the due process clause.”

Napolitano points out there are about 800,000 protected young people also known as “dreamers” in the country registered under DACA. She says they’ve done everything they’ve been asked to do including getting their educations, starting businesses and serving in the military. While there are those who argue they were brought to the U.S. illegally as children or came with families who overstayed visas, Napolitano argues DACA was, as she puts it, “an exercise in prosecutorial discretion.”

“We don’t deport everyone who is here illegally, we don’t have the resources to do that. And to defer deportation on these individuals who bear no culpability, they were brought here usually by other family members, have grown up in the United States, to bring the full weight of immigration enforcement machinery down on them is inconsistent with good immigration policy. It is in this instance inconsistent with the law and it’s inconsistent with our values as a nation.”

Napolitano is a participant in GVSU’s Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies Women & Leadership: First Conference of U.S. Women Governors.

Patrick Center, WGVU News.

Patrick joined WGVU Public Media in December, 2008 after eight years of investigative reporting at Grand Rapids' WOOD-TV8 and three years at WYTV News Channel 33 in Youngstown, Ohio. As News and Public Affairs Director, Patrick manages our daily radio news operation and public interest television programming. An award-winning reporter, Patrick has won multiple Michigan Associated Press Best Reporter/Anchor awards and is a three-time Academy of Television Arts & Sciences EMMY Award winner with 14 nominations.