Trump admin have slowed down the pace of DACA Renewals

NK74 · 01:39 AM

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Victor Jardon-Reyes worked for companies that provide airplane repair supplies, commuting to O’Hare and Midway airports from his home in Belmont Cragin to put in half-day shifts consulting with mechanics and giving them the needed parts to keep the skies safe.

But on Feb. 18, the 33-year-old lost his job. Through no fault of his own, he had lost the right to work.

Jardon-Reyes is a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a federal program instituted under President Barack Obama that gives some legal protection and a work permit to children who were brought to the U.S. by immigrant parents without legal authorization.

DACA lasts for two years and then must be renewed. Jardon-Reyes applied to renew his in November. The government confirmed receipt later that month. He received an appointment for fingerprinting in January but the expected renewal did not come through before his DACA expired.

Without it, he lost his permission to work legally in the country and with that, protection from deportation.

“You feel like a dog on the corner waiting for somebody to feed them,” Jardon-Reyes said.

His situation is one faced by scores of immigrants across the country. Advocates say delays in paperwork renewal by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have increased, with some delays stretching up to six months. Without the renewal, DACA recipients are in danger of being placed in deportation proceedings.

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Donald Trump and his administration have long argued that DACA is unlawful and an overreach of executive power. Trump has repeatedly called the program “illegal amnesty” that bypasses Congress. During his first term, his administration moved to terminate DACA in 2017, but the effort was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020 after justices ruled the administration failed to provide adequate legal justification. Legal challenges to the program have continued, and in January 2025 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit again found major parts of DACA unlawful.

As the legal case continues, the program is suspended. New, first-time applications are not being processed due to federal court orders while pending initial applications are frozen.

Meanwhile, advocates and attorneys across the country told the Tribune that, anecdotally, they have seen an increase in delays. Yet how prevalent those delays are can be hard to quantify. In one small example, a paralegal from The Resurrection Project submitted 37 renewal applications late last year. As of this month, 14 of them are delayed, the applicants’ work permits now expired, as the cases wind their way through the system.

“Right now what we’re seeing, it could take up to six months,” said Emma Melton, the attorney handling DACA cases at The Resurrection Project. That timeline exceeds the processing window many applicants are told to expect of one to two months.

There are an estimated half a million DACA recipients in the country who are potentially affected by the problem.

Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, said the delays are a widespread concern. She worries the Trump administration is “slowly dismantling the program” through a “death by a thousand cuts strategy.”

DACA recipients are “super vetted,” she said, as individual applicants undergo regular background checks. Those who have had it from the program’s beginning more than a decade ago have paid more than $3,000 to renew.

Tom Wong, political science professor at the University of California at San Diego and founding director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center, said the delays are consistent with other problems with USCIS under the Trump administration.

“The administration isn’t hiding what it is trying to do. Since Trump won, there has been a very clear, ‘let’s throw wrenches into the process so that we can slow things down as much as possible,’” Wong said.

“That leads to people not being able to enter the United States, not just DACA recipients but also asylees not being able to work. That means people are not able to adjust (status). In some cases that also means denaturalization,” he added.

Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, faculty director at Path2Papers, a Cornell Law School project aimed at helping DACA holders, said the renewal process already contains uncertainties. For instance, deciding when to apply for renewal is a challenge.

Citizenship and Immigration Services might grant their renewal but apply it to the date of their application instead of the end of the previous work authorization, effectively giving them less time. Uncertainty around DACA strains businesses too, by complicating personnel decisions

“It’s very challenging to keep projects moving and have a predictable and stable workforce when we have these kinds of needless delays,” Kelley-Widmer said.

Trump’s expanded, aggressive immigration actions have also raised political questions about how people with DACA are being treated.

Earlier this month, Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois and Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Texas pressed the Department of Homeland Security and USCIS over conflicting information about the arrest and deportation of people enrolled in DACA.

In September, 95 members of Congress requested a full accounting from the DHS of how many active DACA recipients had been detained or deported since January 2025, including where and when those arrests occurred.

DHS responded that 270 DACA recipients had been arrested and 174 DACA applicants had been removed from the United States between Jan. 1 and Sept. 28, 2025.

But in a separate response to Sen. Dick Durbin, DHS reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested 261 DACA recipients and removed 86 from the country between Jan. 1 and Nov. 19, 2025, a longer time frame that showed fewer arrests and removals.

“It is clear that DACA recipients are at great risk; we must have transparency,” Ramirez said.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/...p-immigration/

Nycgal111 · 03-16-2026, 12:26 PM

I asked that famous lawyer Charles Kuck about DACA and he said I hope you renewed A YEAR in advance! I see so many people renewing 2 -3 months in advance and talking about how they aren’t getting renewed in time and how they got renewed in like a week last time. Well yeah cuz that wasn’t when Stephen Miller was in charge. I got approved less than a week last time I renewed under Biden.

There is a lot of drama going in government agencies with the previous DOGE layoffs and people quitting, a lot of DOJ lawyers quit because they don’t want to do unethical and illegal things. They are having a hard time hiring lawyers at the DOJ. And then at USCIS, they are coming up with all sorts of things to make things more and more difficult for immigrants. I hope we survive til the midterms and there are fair and free elections with all that is going on in the world thanks to this administration.

dtrt09 · 01:14 PM

I am going to repost my message from another thread:

If nothing has changed re: bio/demographic information, they should process the document within a reasonable time. Six months is understandable. People pay for the processing; anything longer than 6months means they have to rehire the workers idiot M usk got fired. Christ, what an a**hole. Seems the purpose of his ridiculous DOGE was to get access to Americans' data and to see the processes that he would otherwise have absolutely zero right to see.

Every other agency that takes your money and cashes your check for a benefit, provides it within a reasonable timeline - 6, maybe 8 months should be the maximum.

I sent an inquiry about an application being past the processing time and received an automated response with appendix of "RPA". RPA IS A BOT!! Wtf.

The company that runs this for USCIS is Brillient. From a web search:
Brillient: Implemented an RPA bot at the USCIS National Benefits Center to automate workflows related to the N-400 (Application for Naturalization) "Outgoing Files/Back End Updating" process, reportedly achieving 100% accuracy and reducing manual processing times.

DACA or EAD applications are not N-400s. Good Lord.

DogJuiceMan · 03-25-2026, 12:13 AM

Should we submit early? Will they process them within the time limit? I think they just reject them if they are too early.

dtrt09 · 03-25-2026, 01:18 PM

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Originally Posted by DogJuiceMan

Should we submit early? Will they process them within the time limit? I think they just reject them if they are too early.

Exactly. And we haven't received notification that the process has changed. The point is that it is fraud to take one's benefit application money and mess up without correcting the process. That company Brillient states on its website that their product led to a staff reduction of 40% at USCIS.

hDreamer1988 · 03-25-2026, 04:15 PM

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Should we submit early? Will they process them within the time limit? I think they just reject them if they are too early.

This issue is discussed extensively on the DACA Reddit forum. Many people have said they applied for more than 150 day and none have claimed their application has been rejected... If it had, I am sure they would have complained there.

Personally, I am planning to apply 180 days in advance because there are people from October still waiting on their approval. The most recent approval was from november 25

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Trump admin have slowed down the pace of DACA Renewals