WALLACE: Let me just interrupt because I’m closer to Washington now than you were, although you were a Democratic leader here for years.
But no, the Democrats are — Republicans rather are not insisting on linking DACA and immigration. They just want to pass a funding bill and, in fact, they are talking about a three or four-week continuing resolution.
Let me switch to another subject, because you brought up the fact that DACA is alive and well now. And one of the reasons it’s alive and well is because you as California’s attorney general filed a lawsuit where the judge agreed to stop the phasing out of DACA by March.
I want to ask you about that because this — it seems to me, sir, is not the no-brainer that some people suggested. President Obama didn’t even create the DACA act. It didn’t even protect the Dreamers until 2012, almost four full years into his term when he was running for reelection. Why doesn’t, just as a matter of principle and law, why doesn’t President Trump have the same right to end DACA? And in fact, he doesn’t want to end DACA. He just wants to be a congressional law, not an executive action.
But why doesn’t he have the same right to move on DACA that President Obama did when he started four years into his term?
BECERRA: Chris, because no person in this country, even the president, is above the law. If he wants to take an action he must do it according to the law.
And as the judge held in this case, the president and his administration acted arbitrarily and capriciously. And so, that’s why we’ve been able to have several victories. It’s kind of poetic that the son of immigrants is the person wielding the legal slingshot against the Trump administration’s attacks on our constitutional civil rights.
But the reason we keep winning, in fact, we are batting a thousand against this administration is because the president believes he is above the law and he continues to act arbitrarily and capriciously and taking action. If you want to change the law, Chris, don’t break it.
WALLACE: Well, I’m not sure I understand how he’s breaking it. He was saying this was an executive order taken by the president. It wasn’t even a law and here you had Donald Trump saying I am resending that executive order giving six months to do so.
Why is that breaking the law?
BECERRA: Because, Chris, you go about a process. Even President Obama went about a process to establish an executive order. You go about a process.
Remember, you have a whole bunch of people in this country when our government takes action, they start to rely on the representations of our government, to their detriment. And so, whether it’s the consumer who decides to get health care or the consumer who decides to go send his kids to particular college, it’s based on certain representation oftentimes that the government says, we will be there in this respect of health care or an education or on immigration.
And if you are going to try to unwind that you’ve got to do it through the right process, and clearly the president has continued to be arbitrary and capricious in the way he’s tried to undo things. And that’s why as I said before we haven’t lost a case yet against Donald Trump, a guy who should know how to operate in the courts since he’s been sued or sued himself thousands of times.