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Texas Renews Dreamer Attack, Presses Judge to Throw Out DACA

Texas Renews Dreamer Attack, Presses Judge to Throw Out DACA

(Bloomberg) -- Texas is ratcheting up its attack on the Obama-era Dreamer program that protects hundreds of thousands of children of undocumented immigrants from deportation now that the U.S. Supreme Court has taken a pass on it.

Texas and a raft of conservative-led states on Monday asked a federal judge to outlaw Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, six months after the jurist signaled he’s sympathetic to arguments that President Barack Obama’s launch of the program in 2012 ran afoul of federal law.

Texas reminded U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, a city on the Mexico border, he’d already said the Dreamer program probably violated federal rule-making procedures and exceeded the president’s authority to rewrite laws when Congress can’t be persuaded to act.

Hanen stopped short in his August ruling of dismantling DACA, out of deference to other federal judges who’ve refused to block the program and his concern over upending the lives of roughly 800,000 Dreamers.

The Supreme Court in mid-January declined to take up the DACA controversy, suggesting the program may stay in place at least until the end of this year.

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