Fourteen years ago June 15, the federal government made a commitment to young people without permanent residency who had grown up here, gone to school here, and who called the US home. The message then was: You belong. Stay and contribute.
That program is DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), a policy that has shielded more than 835,000 people from deportation and granted them the ability to work legally in the only country most of them have ever truly known.
When DACA launched in 2012, recipients, sometimes referred to as Dreamers, had to be 31 or younger. That means today, many of those same people are in their 30s and 40s. They are established. They are your neighbors, your colleagues, your children’s teachers and coaches. They have careers, mortgages, businesses, and families, including children who are American citizens.
Now the stability DACA granted is under threat – in part because the government has chosen inaction as a weapon. Rather than ending the program outright, the administration undermines it by means of smaller shifts in policy, and by letting work authorization expiration dates grow closer as DACA is being litigated in court, while recipients endure uncertainty. DACA recipients face the possibility of losing their work authorization and being left without any legal status – not because of anything they’ve done or neglected to do, but because the government is deliberately allowing their paperwork to lapse. They did everything right. The system is quite intentionally being rigged against them.
In 2025 the administration announced that it would no longer uphold protections against deportation for DACA recipients, who are lawfully present in the US. DHS has now confirmed they have detained at least 270 DACA recipients, deported 86 DACA recipients and deported 174 DACA applicants. [That number has increased to 340, according to United We Dream.]
The administration has rescinded access to the Affordable Care Act, blocked access to higher education, raised fees and encouraged DACA recipients to self-deport. The fact that many of them have never known any home other than the US is considered irrelevant.
Fourteen years in, the question isn’t whether they belong here. The question is whether we will allow these injustices to continue to be visited upon our communities.
Take Action: Demand Congress End the Detention of DACA Recipients and All Immigrants
Learn more: Code Switch Podcast on NPR: Trump’s policies are trapping DACA recipients in limbo 39 minute listen
Resources:
Home Is Here Coalition: DACA – DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS: 10+ Ways the Trump Administration is Undermining DACA [April 2026] (June 2026 UPDATE: NY Times: Judge Says Trump Officials Must Restart Asylum and Immigration Processing)
Home Is Here Detention Tracker
FWD.us: DACA 14 Years Later – From students to careers and families [May 2026]
KFF: Key Facts on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) [Feb 2025]