Announcing the legal challenge Wednesday alongside a crowd of young immigrants and immigration advocates, Mr. Schneiderman accused the Trump administration of using the threat of lawsuits as a “pretext” that hid the president’s true motives: bias against immigrants and Latinos.

Mr. Schneiderman’s lawsuit said that “ending DACA, whose participants are mostly of Mexican origin, is a culmination of President Trump’s oft-stated commitments — whether personally held, stated to appease some portion of his constituency, or some combination thereof — to punish and disparage people with Mexican roots.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Schneiderman said, “We think the court will take a look at what’s behind the change in policy and conclude that the rationales offered yesterday don’t make any sense.”