The Paul, Weiss Litigation Department is led by a team of the country’s most accomplished trial lawyers. Our litigators handle the most complex and demanding lawsuits, class actions, government investigations, criminal prosecutions and restructurings. Our clients include Fortune 50 corporations and other prominent companies in the financial services, investment, medical device, pharmaceutical, sports, technology, energy, media and insurance industries. Every day, we are called on by chief executives, board chairs, general counsel, investors and entrepreneurs for our unmatched trial skills, sophisticated business judgment and renowned strategic advice.
Secretary Johnson Publishes Op-Ed in Support of DACA in The Wall Street Journal
August 7, 2017
In an Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journal, litigation partner Jeh Johnson advises President Trump to continue the policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which defers deportation of certain undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. The opinion piece was prompted by a September 5 deadline set by 10 states threatening to sue the federal government unless it ends DACA. Secretary Johnson writes that the immigration policy, established by the Obama administration in 2012, currently applies to roughly a million individuals nationally, who receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and eligibility for a work permit.
“During my three years as secretary of homeland security, the government returned, removed or repatriated more than a million illegal aliens,” Secretary Johnson writes. “But I always endeavored personally to hear the individual stories of those immigrants our government arrests or deports. One of my lasting memories is that of a young man I met in Honduras who came to the U.S. as a child with his mother and brother, and who grew up in New Jersey. Before the creation of DACA in 2012, he was scooped up and deported back to Honduras alone, without his family. In all visible respects he was American—he spoke perfect English with a familiar New York-New Jersey accent, grew up with American television, and is a New York Giants fan. Somehow, though he was evicted from the U.S., dislodged from his family here, and forced to make a new life in Honduras, he still loves America and the New York Giants.
“Mr. President, do the right thing. Protect the kids. Don’t end DACA,” he concludes.