The judge who President Trump railed against during his campaign will oversee the case of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipient who was deported.
U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who presided over the class-action lawsuit against Trump University despite repeated calls from the president to recuse himself because of his Mexican heritage, will handle the lawsuit brought on behalf of Juan Manuel Montes, 23, who was deported in February.
Montes, currently in Mexico, lived in the U.S. since the age of nine and had been protected twice by the DACA status, a program enacted by the Obama administration to protect undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children from deportation. The DACA program is valid through 2018.
Last year, Trump demanded that Curiel recuse himself from the Trump University lawsuit because of his 2016 campaign promises to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and to crank down on illegal immigration. Trump said Curiel’s Mexican heritage meant he had an inherent conflict of interest.
USA Today reports that Curiel’s assignment to Montes’s case is coincidental.
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