The following is a response from Juan Escalante, Communications Director of America’s Voice and DACA recipient, on Sessions’ statement regarding Judge Bates’ ruling from Friday on DACA:
As an ardent opponent of DACA, it is unsurprising that Attorney General Jeff Sessions would use his anti-immigrant perch at the Department of Justice to lambaste a court decision mandating the federal government to reinstate the DACA program in its entirety.
Sessions – operating under high-sounding legal conclusions – is taking the low road and putting hundreds of thousands of young aspiring Americans on a path to deportation. The DACA program has been in place for the past six years – benefitting hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who contribute to their community on a regular basis – and was deemed lawful by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel back in 2014.
In short, Sessions is outright contradicting the previous legal conclusion of the agency he currently oversees.
The Attorney General can claim that he’s upholding the rule of law all he wants, but he conveniently forgets that the rule of law works when it aligns with justice. Someday soon the Supreme Court will decide whether the termination of DACA is legal, but no one can convince the vast majority of Americans that doing so is just.
