California just sued Trump over DACA “travesty”

California is suing the Trump administration over its decision to repeal the DACA program, which protected more than 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children — one in four of whom live in California.

California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced the lawsuit at a press conference in Sacramento Monday, where he was accompanied on stage by two DACA recipients. The suit was also joined by the attorneys general from Maryland, Maine, and Minnesota.

“In our complaint, we argue that the reckless choice to rescind DACA violated the constitution as well as federal laws that help ensure our government treat everyone fairly and transparently,” said Becerra who also said the government violated federal statutes for making “arbitrary and capricious decisions for no good reason.”

Becerra told the Associated Press last week the lawsuit was motivated by the large number of DACA recipients who live in California.

About 216,060 DACA recipients currently live in the state, according to an analysis by CNBC, and 188,000 are currently working. The decision to repeal DACA and deport hundreds of thousands of people would cost the state an annual loss of $11.3 billion, significantly more than any other state in the U.S., the study found.

“It would not only be a travesty economically for our state, it would be a travesty for local law enforcement,” Becerra said at the the press conference.

The University of California also filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration last week, saying college students were going to be deported and unable to complete their degrees “based on nothing more than unreasoned executive whim.” The lawsuit was spearheaded by the president of the California public system Janet Napolitano, who created the DACA program in 2012 as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.