Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
If TPS is the highest-profile statutory humanitarian relief program for foreign nationals, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is its executive action counterpart.
DACA was the Obama administration’s most visible immigrant relief effort, an origin story that attracts Democrats and repels Republicans.
But through its lifetime, DACA has gained bipartisan clout because it protects a publicly sympathetic group of people known as “Dreamers.”
Dreamers are undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as minors — DACA beneficiaries are a subset of Dreamers who fulfilled the program’s requirements, including being born on or after 1981, arriving before 2007 and passing the relevant background checks.
Because DACA started in 2012 with age-specific rules, the DACA-eligible population has shrunk significantly since its inception. At its peak, the program had more than 800,000 beneficiaries, a number that as of June shrunk to 535,030, according to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Throughout its lifetime, DACA has faced multiple challenges on its legality, primarily through lawsuits led by red states, and a case is currently under review by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. During litigation, DHS has been barred from processing any new DACA applications, increasing the rate of membership attrition.
DACA was first declared illegal in 2021 by a federal judge in Texas, who argued the Obama administration circumvented Congress in its creation by not issuing it as a rule subject to a comments period. In 2023, that same judge ruled President Biden’s reissuing of the program as a rule subject to comments was also illegal.
“DACA is already being litigated, right? We’re waiting for that final decision. So in some ways, like the question of how sound DACA is, is already in the hands of the judiciary,” said Gupta.
That could make a Trump rescission of the program moot, though he did order its termination in 2017, despite faint hopes from immigrant advocates that he would spare Dreamers.
https://thehill.com/latino/4993723-t...ortation-plan/