Processing delays create problems for DACA recipients
Javier Diaz, left, communicates with his attorney through a sign language interpreter as his brother Miguel, right, looks on in downtown Los Angeles in July 2025. Diaz, who is deaf and mute, is a DACA recipient and was working at a car wash in Temple City, Calif., when he was arrested during an ICE raid.
LOS ANGELES — After their work permits expired, an immigration attorney near San Diego was fired and a nurse in California's East Bay area was placed on unpaid leave.
Both depend on work permits and legal protection afforded under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program created by President Barack Obama in 2012 for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. But recent processing delays at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are leaving many DACA recipients vulnerable to arrest and deportation as their two-year work permits expire.
"It's definitely an attack on the program," said the lawyer, Maria Fernanda Madrigal. "My first thought was, 'Oh, they're so clever. They weren't able to end the program through the courts, so this is what they're doing.'"
Over the past several years, median processing times for DACA renewals were under two months. Now, most cases are finished within 3.5 months, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The agency did not explain what's causing the processing delays. Spokesperson Zach Kahler wrote in a statement that "under the leadership of President Trump, USCIS is safeguarding the American people by more thoroughly screening and vetting all aliens."
DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country, he said.
During his first term in office, Trump tried unsuccessfully to rescind DACA.
This time around, his administration has simply weakened its benefits.
Last year, Department of Homeland Security officials started urging DACA recipients to self-deport. The Department of Health and Human Services made DACA recipients ineligible for health insurance through Obamacare.
And last month, a precedent-setting decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals, which will apply to immigration judges across the country, said having DACA is not enough to protect someone from deportation.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said ICE arrested 650 DACA recipients between Jan. 20, 2025, and April 30, nearly 90% of whom were not charged with or convicted of a crime. The spokesperson did not say how many were deported.
But in a February letter to U.S. senators, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency deported 86 DACA recipients between Jan. 1 and Nov. 19, 2025. Federal judges have ordered the agency to return some, including Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, a Sacramento mother who was deported a day after her green card interview.
Lawmakers are expressing alarm that DACA's promise of protection is being undermined.
Last month, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee held a forum on the Trump administration's "all-out assault on DACA." The forum featured Santa Ana Police Chief Robert Rodriguez, who testified that he was forced to fire a police officer because their work permit renewal was not processed on time.
Last week, members of the House from California's Central Valley, including Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, sent a letter to Homeland Security and Citizenship and Immigration Services leaders, urging them to expedite DACA processing.
"Our offices have seen a substantial increase in constituent cases involving pending renewals, with many remaining unresolved for more than six months," the letter continued. "These extended processing times are creating avoidable hardships for our communities and our economy."
California has more than a quarter of the nation's approximately 500,000 DACA recipients, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services figures. On average, they are 31 years old.
To qualify for DACA, applicants had to pass background checks and meet certain educational or work requirements.
During a news conference ahead of the DACA forum last month, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., reflected on the day in June 2012 when DACA applications first opened. He said parents of young immigrants asked him if it was safe for their children to sign up for the program, which required admitting their lack of legal status and home address.
"Are you sure that the government won't use that information against us at some time?" he remembered them asking. "I said, 'Follow the law exactly as it is written and announced in the executive order, and we'll stand by you. Just believe in us to do that.'"
"Well, I didn't anticipate the current president and what he is now doing," Durbin continued.
Sarah Krieger, a former Citizenship and Immigration Services official who is now senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, said processing delays were caused, in part, by the agency temporarily pausing an automated system for processing DACA and other applications.
