New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal on Thursday filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court defending the state's "Dreamers."

If the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) ended, an estimated 53,000 DACA-eligible residents in New Jersey, as well as 17,000 active, in-state DACA grantees, would suffer "catastrophic" harm, the brief argues.

Grewal's brief draws on the Garden State's successful litigation working in conjunction with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) in blocking a Texas-led effort to terminate DACA last year.

DACA started in 2012 and under the program, immigrants who came to the U.S. as children can stay in the country if they meet certain criteria and renew their applications every two years. In 2017, President Donald Trump rescinded DACA on grounds that it was illegal. The federal government's core argument before the U.S. Supreme Court is that DACA was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by former President Barack Obama—"executive overreach," then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at the time.

Injunctions were granted requiring that Trump administration maintain the program while litigation went on. Last June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear the DACA case.

New Jersey's brief asserts that DACA did not remove discretion from the U.S, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but rather provided "lawful agency guidance," according to a release from the Attorney General's Office. "This is not an academic exercise," Grewal said in a statement Thursday. "This is about real lives, real families and real futures."

Read New Jersey's brief here: