Young undocumented migrants in the US are gearing up for their next fight after the program for temporary deportation relief stopped accepting applications, for good, on Thursday.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) in September. Hundreds of thousands of people who were brought to the US as children were given a month to renew their status and buy themselves two more years of relief from the threat of deportation.
The end of Daca has been mourned by immigration advocates, who are filing legal challenges against the White House. Those protected by the program, which also provided the ability to work and go to school legally, are also looking forward.
“Daca’s helped in so many ways, with school, with being able to afford things, but it was still keeping us in a limbo,” Amzi, a college student in California who requested her last name not be used, told the Guardian.
Daca recipients had to renew their applications every two years. The program provided no path to citizenship.
As Amzi said, though Daca was helpful, she was left asking herself: “How long am I going to be in this program until I can see I’m going somewhere with it?”
The shortcomings of the program are up for debate as Congress works to find a replacement. Donald Trump cancelled the program, but confusingly he also challenged lawmakers to introduce legislation to protect would-be Daca recipients. If they do not, existing Daca work permits will expire and recipients will be vulnerable to deportation.
Replacement bills are being debated in the House and Senate. Republicans said such a bill must include improved border security and increased funding for immigration enforcement. Democrats have said they are open to this. Amzi did not expect Congress to introduce a solution in the next few months, but was optimistic that progress will be made in the next few years.
“There is a part of me that will always be hopeful,” she said. “Because Daca took a long time but it did happen.”
As of Thursday afternoon, 36,000 of the 154,000 people eligible for Daca renewal had not applied, according to early estimates by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Immigration advocates raised money to help people pay the $495 application fee and lawyers turned out in droves to offer free legal counseling.
And yet, advocates said, some people were deterred from applying for renewal because they did not have access to such resources, because the application window was too short, and because they were concerned about sharing personal data with the government.
For those who have Daca protection, there is still uncertainty about what will happen if the protection expires before an alternative has been introduced.
“Ever since 5 September there is an awareness of when your permit expires,” said Juan Escalante, a Daca recipient whose application was renewed this summer. “Pretty much everyone I talk to has their expiration date memorized.”
Escalante, 28, is a campaign manager for America’s Voice, an immigration advocacy group. He has lived in the US since his family arrived from Venezuela in 2000. The most significant thing Daca gave him, he said, was seeing “what it was like to live a normal life without worry and fear of what was going to happen tomorrow”.
Escalante was confident lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were working to come up with a replacement plan, but was concerned that partisanship could stop a viable solution being found.
States, Daca recipients and immigration advocacy groups have all challenged the legality of terminating Daca. On Thursday, Casa, an immigrant rights organization, and a coalition of legal groups filed a lawsuit on behalf of 16 individuals who qualify for deportation relief, including teenagers who will now not be able to apply. The lawsuit said the federal government’s “draconian immigration enforcement efforts” violated the fundamental principle of fairness of equality.
The American Civil Liberties Union also filed suit on Thursday. Lawyers for 15 states, led by New York and Washington, sued the administration shortly after the decision was announced in September. California, where more than 220,000 people were approved for Daca, filed a separate suit with three other states a week later.
California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, said in announcing the lawsuit that his state would be hit hardest. Recipients should not be punished for things that were done by others, he said, adding: “We don’t bait and switch in this country.”
