Arizona attorney general warns Trump that deporting Dreamers will be a ‘bright red line’
Arizona’s top law enforcement official said in a recent interview that she is not afraid to stand up to President-elect Trump on immigration enforcement.
Democratic Attorney General Chris Meyers told the Guardian that any plans to build deportation centers — which she previously called “concentration camps” — in the Grand Canyon State would be a nonstarter.
Mace defended Dreamers, recipients of the Obama-era DACA program, saying any federal attempt to send them back to their home countries would be “a bright red line to me.”
“I will not tolerate attempts to expel them or undermine them,” Mays said. “I will fight as legally as I can [family separation or construction of deportation camps].
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President Trump speaks with Thomas Homan, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, during an enforcement roundtable on sanctuary cities in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., March 20, 2018. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“Not on our land.”
The Dreamers moniker comes from the DREAM Act – Development, Relief, and Education of Alien Minors. The bill was first introduced in 2001 by Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican. Durbin reintroduced it, but it never became law.
Most recently, Durbin and his Republican counterpart in Senate Judiciary Committee leadership, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, introduced the proposal in 2023.
Former President Obama borrowed parts of this legislation when developing DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).
Trump previously tried to repeal DACA, but was blocked by the Supreme Court in Department of Homeland Security v. University of California.
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“I think the Supreme Court will ultimately see the benefit of protecting them,” Mays said of the Dreamers.
“We want to give the court the opportunity to make the right decision here, and we will make a very strong argument for this claim.”
In comments previously reported by The Arizona Mirror, Meyers said the problem with mass deportation proposals put forward by Trump and “border czar-elect” Tom Homan and others is that they could lead to abuses of the system. .
Meyers says she wants to see violent criminals and drug cartel members deported from U.S.
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Chris Meyers (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)
In an interview with The Guardian, Mace praised border countries for near-total cooperation on immigration issues.
New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torres, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Mace are “united,” she said, adding that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is the only one who is not. of border state law enforcement officers.
“[W]We will fight for due process and individual rights,” she said of herself, Torrez and Bonta.
Mace also acknowledged the fentanyl crisis and the porous border and said the people of Arizona rightly want to correct the problem.
She reportedly said more federal resources should be directed toward additional border patrols and prosecuting people with ties to the cartels, rather than Trump’s idea of using the National Guard to help deport illegal immigrants.
“[W]When Arizonans voted for Donald Trump, they did not vote to crush the Arizona and U.S. Constitutions [and] I firmly believe that,” she told the Guardian.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump campaign and some members of Arizona’s Republican congressional delegation for comment on Mace’s Guardian interview, but had not received a response as of press time.
