Daca Renewal Delays Fuel Worries Trump Is Quietly Undermining ‘dreamers’

Concerns are mounting on Capitol Hill and among immigration advocates that the Trump administration is quietly gutting a landmark program allowing unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to stay, work and study legally in the United States.

A major immigrant rights advocacy group recently documented in a study that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is taking months longer on average to renew legal protections for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, often referred to as “Dreamers.”

Those delays are causing some supporters of the program on Capitol Hill to worry the Trump administration is weaponizing bureaucracy to undermine DACA. In floor speeches and on social media last week, prominent Democrats accused the Trump administration of targeting DACA recipients unfairly as part of the White House’s immigration crackdown.

“I can’t see how it’s not intentional,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), one of the main legislative champions for the DACA program, said in a brief interview. “In previous years, we’d get maybe a dozen cases” in which DACA recipients were left waiting for long stretches of time for their work permits to be approved. Now, Padilla notes, “it’s in the hundreds.”

On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) said she had “serious concerns” about the slowdown in processing.

“These delays are leaving hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who grew up in America stuck in legal limbo, unable to participate in the workforce and contribute to communities they call home,” Salazar said in a statement to POLITICO.

Business groups are also joining the chorus of concerned parties, warning that American companies are losing out as delays in DACA renewals sideline talented, highly vetted employees and prevent Dreamers from using their skills and education productively.

DACA recipients have to renew their work permits every two years by submitting an application to USCIS, which can revoke their status if they have felony convictions or multiple misdemeanors on their criminal record.

President Donald Trump attempted to kill DACA in his first term, but was overruled in 2020 by the Supreme Court, which found the program’s termination "arbitrary and capricious." Since his return to office, Trump hasn’t made any such moves to eliminate DACA and has not spoken out against it.

Doug Rand, a former senior adviser to USCIS during the Biden administration, accused the administration of slow-walking renewals to circumvent court orders preventing the White House from eliminating DACA outright.

“Trump's people found an end run: Just don't do the work,” he said.

A study released last week by TheDream.US, a group that provides scholarships to Dreamers, found that while USCIS has not denied applications it has processed, the backlog of cases awaiting processing has increased dramatically, and there have been fewer and fewer approvals since the fall of 2025. The group projected it would take USCIS more than four months to clear the backlog.

The mounting delays from USCIS are causing a number of Dreamers to lose their legal status under DACA as they wait for renewal, rendering them ineligible to work and vulnerable to deportation. In the past, renewal of work authorizations for Dreamers took about two months, but the number of DACA recipients waiting more than six months has increased significantly.

A former USCIS official familiar with dynamics within the agency, granted anonymity for fear of reprisal, cautioned that USCIS writ large has been slow to process all kinds of immigration applications and that DACA delays fit into a broader trend.

But DACA has usually been separated from other programs that forestall removal proceedings against unauthorized immigrants, such as those with pending asylum claims, given the unique nature of the population it serves.

USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler insisted the agency “is safeguarding the American people by more thoroughly screening and vetting all aliens.” Kahler added: “DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country. Illegal aliens claiming to be recipients of DACA are not automatically protected from deportation.”

For example, Kahler noted, DACA recipients can still be deported for criminal activity. DHS announced Thursday that Abraham Alvarez, one of the alleged ringleaders of a plot against last week’s UFC match on the White House grounds, is a DACA recipient. ICE is moving to deport Alvarez once he faces criminal adjudication, the department said.

Despite his administration’s past efforts to nix the executive order governing DACA, Trump himself has expressed openness to the inclusion of a legal pathway to citizenship for Dreamers in immigration legislation. That position is backed by a sizable majority of Americans. 2025 polling data from Gallup found that 85 percent of Americans support creating a legal pathway for Dreamers to become U.S. citizens.

Salazar said that Congress needs to act to pass the DIGNITY Act, a bipartisan immigration reform package she’s championed that would create a permanent solution to Dreamers’ legal status. But efforts on Capitol Hill to codify protections for Dreamers face uphill odds in the Republican-controlled House and Senate, despite bipartisan backing for such legislation in the past. Republican sponsors of legislation to extend protections for Dreamers say they’re hopeful, but acknowledge the issue has been deprioritized.

“This has not become a priority to get floor time,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), one of a handful of GOP sponsors of a September 2025 bill supporting Dreamers. Cramer insisted he still supports legislation to help Dreamers.

Asked about the delays in the legislation, Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), another of the Senate Republican co-sponsors of the September 2025 bill, added: “It’s super frustrating. … Hopefully the timing will be right and we’ll get it done.”

The American Business Immigration Coalition — which advocates for sensible immigration policies in the service of American companies — organized a letter released on Monday, the 14th anniversary of the program’s creation, where more than 100 organizations called on the administration to address the renewal delays and reiterated support for legislation helping Dreamers.

“The uncertainty surrounding DACA has become an operational nightmare — these bureaucratic delays are forcing employers to terminate valued, long-term employees who have lived in the U.S. for an average of 26 years,” the letter said. “This is cruel, unnecessary, and destructive to our economy, our communities, and to American jobs.