(Bloomberg) -- A tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump is once again being used in court to try and undermine his immigration agenda -- this time against his plan to rescind the so-called Dreamers program protecting hundreds of thousands of children of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
In the Dec. 29 tweet, Trump said Democrats must back his promised border wall with Mexico and end the chain migration of immigrants' family members if they want to save the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, enacted by former President Barack Obama. Trump ended DACA on Sept. 5, but gave Congress six months to save the program with new legislation.
The tweet "underscores that the rescission was fundamentally unfair and did not further any compelling government interest, but instead was a tactic used to gain leverage to enact the administration's immigration agenda," a group including California and three other states said in a court filing Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco is weighing whether to issue an injunction against the plan to end DACA or dismiss the states' lawsuit to block the deportation of the children as scheduled to begin Mar. 6.
The White House press office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the tweet the president said: “The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc. We must protect our Country at all cost!”
Republican and Democratic senators working on an immigration deal say they are closing in on an agreement combining a border-security package with deportation protections for DACA recipients, many of whom relied on its guarantees to go to college, open small businesses and otherwise establish lives in the U.S.
Trump Hardens Immigration Stance Heading Into Shutdown Talks
The case is Regents of University of California v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 17-cv-05211, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, Peter Blumberg
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