(Updated 12/6/2007)

NEW YORK -- During the Thanksgiving holiday, the federal government announced that it would abandon its proposed Department of Homeland Security "no match" rule which would use error-prone social security records as a tool for immigration enforcement. This came after a federal court found that the rule could cause citizens and other authorized workers to lose their jobs. The government first said that it would put forward a new rule it claims would be in accordance with the court’s decision. But yesterday, in a seemingly inconsistent maneuver, the government announced that it would simultaneously appeal the federal court’s decision blocking the original rule.

Today, Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, took time out of his busy schedule protecting the United States from terrorist threats to attack the ACLU for challenging the illegal rule.

The following can be attributed to Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project:

"Secretary Chertoff should worry more about fixing his agency than attacking its critics. The government obviously recognized that the "no match" rule as drafted would not pass judicial muster. The only ‘wishful thinking’ is DHS’s willful refusal to recognize that 70% of the errors in the database refer to U.S. citizen workers. That is the fundamental flaw that no amount of rhetoric can fix. DHS should abandon this entire misguided endeavor that punishes American workers. Any new "no match" rule based on that flawed database is like putting lipstick on Frankenstein."