EDITORIAL: Paxton’s anti-DACA filing is, by definition, anti-Texan

Jan. 27--Once again, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has used his office to define our state as anti-humanitarian and anti-Hispanic. He filed a brief Thursday with the Supreme Court serving notice that the state is likely to sue if the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program isn't ended by June.

DACA is the Obama-era executive order to save productive, law-abiding undocumented young-adult immigrants who were brought here as children from being deported. It's fair to brand our state government's opposition to DACA as anti-Hispanic because 78 percent of DACA recipients are from Mexico. It's clearly anti-humanitarian to want to remove people forcibly from what likely is the only country they know, only to send them to a country they likely don't remember.

And from the standpoint of economic self-interest, the state should be fighting to keep this demonstrably motivated, upwardly mobile demographic for itself. They have a high tendency to achieve academically, pay taxes and serve in the armed forces.

So, add unpatriotic and anti-veteran to what's wrong with Paxton's resistance to DACA.

In Paxton's defense, he is only representing the majority view of our state government. The ugly spirit of that majority view manifested itself on the last day of the regular session of the 2017 Legislature, when Rep. Matt Rinaldi, R-Irving, got into an ugly physical confrontation with Hispanic lawmakers after he let them know he had alerted immigration authorities about protesters inside the Capitol.

Many of those protesters were Hispanics who Rinaldi evidently assumed to be both Mexico-born and undocumented. They were protesting the state's new show-me-your-papers law -- the very thing Rinaldi called immigration authorities to come and force the protesters to do. It's not at all tangential for us to bring that law, also misnamed the sanctuary cities law, into this discussion about DACA. It comes from the same poisoned well of anti-immigrant hatred as the effort to do away with DACA.

Paxton's legal brief is a continuation of last year's threat by him and nine other states' attorneys general to sue the government if DACA wasn't ended by Sept. 5, 2017. That previous stunt provided the Trump administration the cover it needed to order DACA's end by March of this year.

Paxton's latest brief is in response to the decision Jan. 9 by a federal judge in San Francisco to issue a temporary injunction against the demise of DACA. That ruling was in response to a lawsuit by 15 states alleging intentional discrimination against Mexican immigrants.

The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court and Paxton filed the brief in support of the administration's bid.

Trump, meanwhile, has offered a compromise with congressional Democrats to offer DACA recipients a path to citizenship in exchange for $25 billion to build his hateful border wall -- proof that they're mere pawns to him. The wall was a campaign promise to a loud anti-immigrant segment of the minority that elected Trump. It would be an environmental disaster in addition to being an unjustifiably large expense and a new diplomatic low in what should be a cordial and open relationship with our neighbor to the south.

One more important point about the wall: Trump promised that Mexico would pay for it, not us. The best compromise would be to wait until Mexico agrees to pay, thus ensuring that this scar on the continent doesn't happen.

Texas means "friends" or "allies" in Caddo. The state motto is friendship. Paxton's anti-DACA crusade renders both meaningless.

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