PHOENIX – Diana A., 34, woke up one morning to find she was no longer able to legally work in the U.S.
With expired documents, she couldn't go to her friend's wedding in San Diego.
She couldn't drive.
Diana is a decade-long recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, after she came to the U.S. illegally with her parents 24 years ago from Mexico. She asked NPR to only refer to her by her first name and last initial out of fear of legal repercussions for her immigration status.
Every two years, like other DACA recipients, Diana would submit an application to renew her DACA and work permit. This year, for the first time, the approval lapsed for more than a month.
"It was a very stressful time in my life and it was just, here's hoping today's not the day where I get taken," she said, adding that for the first time she had a mental plan of who to call if she got detained.
Diana hoped DACA would give her more opportunities. Now she worries those opportunities could be taken away.
"This is what I envisioned: having a job, having a career that I could be proud of and being able to be independent and living a life that I could be comfortable with," she said. "And to a certain degree, I think I've achieved the dream — and I think that there's still a cage around it."
The Obama administration created the DACA program in 2012 to protect from deportation those who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. The program was billed as a "temporary" stopgap to provide them a legal way to live and work in the U.S. while Congress negotiated a permanent pathway. But Congress hasn't managed to agree on one.
"We're not kids anymore. We are adults. We are professionals. We are parents. A lot of us are leaders in the community," said Blanca Sierra-Reyes, 33, a DACA recipient and mom to two teenagers. "We're no longer a part of that group that they had placed us in. We have achieved all the things that we've wanted to, or we've tried, or we're still on that path – but it's a hard one."
Now, according to data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the average age of a DACA recipient is 31; and a majority are between the ages of 31 and 44. Beneficiaries of the program have advanced degrees, U.S. citizen children and businesses. Meanwhile, the DACA program has become increasingly unreliable under this second Trump administration.
President Trump has not moved to repeal DACA this term, unlike his first term in office, but his administration has taken steps to weaken the program's benefits and protections, leaving more recipients at risk of immigration detention and deportation.
The instability has left hundreds of thousands unable to plan for the future, and with months-long lapses in legal status. The administration's approach to DACA showcases another way that officials are stripping away legal permissions to be in the country through temporary policies.
"We're seeing a lot of people falling out of work authorization, which means that their employers can't continue to employ them," said Julia Gellat, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. "Some additional screenings might be important, but I don't know that the administration has really clearly justified what security lapses it's trying to address. Instead, it seems to be sort of applying across the board heavy vetting of everybody."
Changing DACA policies lead to more detention, deportation
Over the last several months, the Trump administration has chipped away at the protections the DACA program once provided. DHS officials began urging DACA recipients to self-deport, arguing that the program itself does not automatically provide legal status. The Department of Health and Human Services said it would make DACA recipients ineligible for the federal health care marketplace and the Education Department said it was investigating five universities that offer financial help for DACA recipients.
Most recently, an administrative body at the Justice Department ruled that being a DACA recipient is not enough to provide relief from deportation; that decision sets a precedent for how immigration judges nationwide should interpret status for immigrants on DACA.
As a result of these policies, more recipients of the program have faced immigration detention and deportation.
Between January and November of last year, 261 DACA recipients were arrested by ICE and 86 were removed from the country for failing to have legal status, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told senators earlier this year. Most recently, two DACA recipients, Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez, 42, and Jose Contreras Diaz, 30, were deported and later returned.
Others, like Yenniffer England, 32, remain in detention.
After winning the election, Trump said he wanted DACA recipients to stay. But in the last year, the administration officials have been united in the opposite message.
"If you're in the country illegally, you got a problem," White House border czar Tom Homan told reporters this month when asked about DACA recipients. "I don't think amnesty should be on the table."
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on its approach to DACA.
"As an immigration attorney, I know that DACA isn't anything. I've always described DACA as a Band-Aid to a wound that needs stitches. And a Band-Aid is easily removable," said Salvador Macias, himself a DACA recipient based in Phoenix. "I remember being in my early twenties and saying that I think I would be a citizen when I'm 35. And here I am today at 35, still without anything."
As an attorney, Macias now represents about 300 families in immigration court and helps them file various applications at USCIS. His DACA, which he has had since he was 21, expires this month. It's been five months since he filed his renewal, well within the legal window. He hasn't gotten an answer yet.
"I am very blessed that we have our home and I have my career and have my own business," he said. "I still don't feel stable. I don't know how to plan for the future."
DACA recipients revert to undocumented
DACA renewals typically cannot be filed earlier than 150 days, or about four to five months before status expires. In the past, recipients say they could apply within weeks of expiration and receive an answer within days.
Now, the estimated processing time may exceed six months, according to USCIS correspondence to members of Congress on individual cases that was reviewed by NPR.
Luis, 29 and originally from Mexico, applied for his renewal in November. His DACA status lapsed in February. NPR spoke with him on the condition of anonymity due to his fear of repercussions to his pending application.
"I don't know where I'm at. That's the unfortunate truth," Luis said, noting that his employer placed him on a 90-day leave of absence, since he cannot legally work — and that time has run out. "It's like I'm paying for a subscription that I have no control over, that I can't cancel at any time."
Now he is facing not just unemployment but the inability to work at all.
"It was an opportunity that helped me so much. Any moment now, they could just cut me loose and then I'm doomed," he said. "I've been stuck in this DACA rut for so long that I just don't know what life would be like without it at this point."
Others are bracing for professional and financial strain should their approvals be delayed.
Marena Guzman, 32, recently moved back in with her parents to start renewing her DACA, out of concern that it could lapse and she would lose her source of income. She pursued a Ph.D. in molecular biosciences, at first believing that could grant her visa sponsorship. She later learned that she could only adjust her status through marriage.
"I didn't want to get married for that. I believe in love," Guzman said.
Turning into a "mythical" far-off dream
Older DACA recipients remember a childhood spent without documentation. DACA allowed them to go to college and build professional resumes.
"I'm going to be closer to 40 and I'm still in this. It's just really, really frustrating," Jose Patiño, 37, of Mexico, said. "I don't want to be a 40-year-old undocumented person who has a master's degree and all these things in my resume."
Patiño, who has lived in Arizona since 1985, remembers hearing about the DREAM Act in 2003 while in middle school. The bill, which has been introduced in Congress several times with varying GOP support, would provide a pathway to legal status for people brought to the U.S. illegally as children. But it has never passed.
"I was once 18 years old; I heard about the DREAM Act and I was so hopeful," he said. That hope no longer exists for him.
Patiño said he feels for the younger generation of immigrants, who cannot register for DACA and don't even know what the program is. DACA is limited to only those who came to the U.S. illegally as children prior to 2007.
"The younger audiences have no concept of it at all. So now we're asking them to believe that this mythical thing can happen," said Patiño.
Their impermanent status in the country is one reason why some DACA recipients choose not to marry, have kids or buy homes.
According to demographic data by USCIS, 66% of DACA recipients are single.
Macias, the immigration attorney, has two U.S. citizen children with his wife, who is also a DACA recipient.
"I don't think it's fair to my daughters because it's almost like a repeat of the trauma that I grew up with, where my parents didn't know where they were going to be. And now I'm doing it to them," Macias said. "I'm looking for that moment of exhale because I feel like I've been holding my breath."
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