California challenges President Trump in court

California has challenged the President Donald Trump in court on a multitude of immigration issues. California is fed up with Trump’s immigration policies and as a result, filed multiple lawsuits against the administration. 

California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed his 56th lawsuit against the Trump administration in August. Becerra’s latest challenge to Trump targeted Trump’s new “public charge” immigration policy. Becerra has filed more lawsuits against focusing on California concerns, like the state’s strong standards for auto emissions, or the rights of pregnant women or transgender soldiers. 

“What I intend to do is protect the laws that we have, that have helped us be so vibrant, and I will do anything to fight any attacks that would hurt California,” said Becerra.

California is leading a nearly 20-state lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s abandonment of a prior rule governing how long immigrant children can be detained. This lawsuit challenges new rules set by the Department of Homeland Security that effectively undo the Flores settlement, an agreement established after a lawsuit involving several immigrant children, which limited the amount of time the government was allowed to detain an immigrant child to 20 days or less. This settlement established minimum guidelines for safe and sanitary conditions in detention facilities, requiring the government to provide children with basic needs like food, water, and medical care. Trump’s rule change, set to go into effect in about 60 days, would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain families indefinitely after transferring them from border custody. 

Becerra also announced California was filing a lawsuit to stop Trump administration’s “public charge” rule, a policy that will likely make it much harder for immigrants to apply for a green card or a visa.

“Yet again, President Trump is disregarding basic human rights and using helpless immigrant children as political pawns to further his ideological agenda,” said Governor Gavin Newsom.

California, home to more than a quarter of all young people covered by the DACA program, became the latest state to challenge Trump over his plan to shut it down. Known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program allows young people who came to the U.S. illegally as children to remain. Of the nearly 790,000 now covered, about 223,000 live in California. The lawsuit contends that the president’s decision to end the program is illegal, violating a federal law requiring public notice and comment before taking significant actions.

California also stands against Trump’s opposition to the 14th Amendment which states that all people born or naturalized in the United States, are citizens of the United States. Trump has threatened to end birthright citizenship though many California lawmakers and legal scholars dispute his authority to do so. 

 The Supreme Court upheld Trump’s ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, delivering to the president a political victory to control immigration of migrants at the Mexican border. But as Trump celebrated his travel ban victory, a federal judge in California ordered the government to stop separating children from their parents at the border and to reunite families already separated. The judge said that all families must be reunited within 30 days and that children under five years must be returned to the custody of their parents within two weeks.

Castro Valley Unified School District took action agasinst Trump’s immigration policies by protecting immigrant families in the school system. 

“As the public and political attacks on immigrant families began to rise in the 2017-2018 school year and families were being separated for crossing the borders into the U.S., the Board of Education passed a resolution in the 17-18 school year affirming the family unit,” said School Board President Dot Theodore. 

“We firmly believe that the separation of families entering our country seeking asylum is unethical and wrong. The school district does not collect immigration information. There is nothing for district officials to report and nothing for the federal government to collect from our students and their families,” said Theodore.