The George Washington University was among 19 universities to file an amicus brief last week in support of students participating in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, the brief supports a challenge to a Sept. 5 memorandum by the Department of Homeland Security rescinding the DACA program.
“Like their classmates, the DACA students on amici’s campuses have the capacity to make enormous contributions to our campuses and our country,” the signatories wrote. “[These universities] have an interest in their undocumented students’ welfare and ability to obtain a full and complete higher education. Amici also have an interest in ensuring that when these students graduate, they are able to put their education to its highest use. The [DHS memorandum] jeopardizes these interests by forcing amici’s students and graduates to make the impossible choice between withdrawing to the margins of our society or returning to countries that many of them have never known. Whatever they choose, their gifts and education will be lost to this nation.”
An amicus brief is a document filed in appellate court by non-litigants who have a strong interest in the case at issue and provide arguments or information that the court may wish to consider.
In addition to GW, Brown University, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, Washington University in St. Louis and Yale University.
