The Trump administration is shifting its tone on how it handles immigrants brought to the U.S. as children under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Also known as DACA, the program was created in 2012 to protect children who arrived in the country illegally prior to 2007 from deportation.
In recent months, the administration has tried to strip 525,000 DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers, of benefits, although no regulatory changes have been made to end the program.
For example, the Health and Human Services Department said it would make DACA recipients ineligible for the federal healthcare marketplace in June. Then last week, the Education Department said it was looking into five universities that offer financial help for DACA recipients. Also, immigration enforcement officers have arrested and detained DACA recipients throughout the country, which immigrant advocates said weakens protections of this group.
"Illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are not automatically protected from deportations," DHS assistant press secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to NPR. "DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country."
McLaughlin added that any DACA recipient may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons, including if they've committed a crime. McLaughlin then urged recipients to self-deport.
"We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way," McLaughlin said.
The call for self-deportation of DACA recipients sends another mixed message in the administration's immigration enforcement policy. At the start of the 2024 presidential campaign, now-White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said President Trump would end the program. After winning the election, Trump said he wanted DACA recipients to stay.
"We've known that DACA remains a program that has been temporary. We've sounded the alarms over that," said Anabel Mendoza, communications director for United We Dream, an immigrant youth organization. "What we are seeing now is that DACA is being chipped away at."
What are DACA's protections?
DACA offers temporary protection from deportation but is not an immediate path to citizenship or a green card. Participants in the program have to renew their protection every two years.
It provides a work permit and can be adjusted if a person leaves the U.S. and comes back with a visa or marries a U.S. citizen, among other options.
When it was created under the Obama administration, the program took eligible children "out of the immigration enforcement system," said Claire McNulty, a former DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who worked at the department when DACA was created. McNulty was later politically appointed by former President Joe Biden to a senior counselor position in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
"If somebody was eligible for DACA, that might mean that they would be released from detention or their case in the immigration court system would be administratively closed so that they could then pursue that sort of administrative relief," McNulty said.
The roughly 500,000 DACA recipients – counted as of the second quarter of this year – are from more than 150 countries. The majority are from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala, according to the USCIS. Most recipients are 35 years old or younger, but some are in their late 30s and early 40s.
So far there has been no effort by this second Trump administration to rescind the program, as Trump tried in his first term. A lawsuit filed by Texas is challenging the program's protections from deportations and work permits for participants in the state.
"The notion that it does not provide protection is simply false," said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, adding that there are reasons DACA protections can be revoked from an individual, including being charged with a crime, which would make them vulnerable to deportation.
Other lawyers point to infractions like driving under the influence of alcohol as a reason DACA and its protections can be revoked.
Saenz said DACA should provide protection from being caught up in a raid by immigration agents or indiscriminately targeted for arrest on the street.
If the administration wanted to take steps to change that, it would need to submit a proposed rule change with the Federal Register, or at least publicly state that position, neither of which has been done, he said. But the administration, he said, appears to have a broader approach to immigration enforcement that's sweeping in DACA recipients.
"Reported arrests of DACA recipients has other DACA recipients very concerned and we've heard it from them," Saenz said.
Enforcement incidents lead to fear
In March, officials deported Evenezer Cortez Martinez, a DACA recipient in Missouri, to Mexico.
He was allowed to return after two weeks. In California, DACA recipients have been detained after a worksite raid and an accidental wrong turn off the freeway. In Florida, a DACA recipient was among the first held at the newly opened Everglades detention center.
"This administration is very strict on how they're applying all of the law and how they're interpreting all of the law. DACA at least used to be a topic that was much more sympathetic in politics," said Maria Quiroga, an immigration attorney who has clients who are DACA recipients. "And that sympathy is now less and less."
Polls conducted over the last five years have shown most Americans support the creation of a legal pathway for DACA recipients. With respect to polling on Trump's immigration policies overall, 43% approve of his handling of the issue so far, according to the most recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll published earlier this month.
Reyna Montoya is the founder of Aliento, a nonprofit that supports DACA recipients and other immigrants, and is a DACA recipient herself. She has been involved with advocating for DACA since 2010. Now 34, she said she has spent most of her young adult life advocating for the program.
"It's been a roller coaster between the three branches of government," Montoya said, adding that the mixed messaging from the administration is adding to the fear. "My livelihood and the livelihood of so many Dreamers is at stake and that we could potentially be subject to being deported to countries that we don't really know or we don't call home."
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