Pressure from civil organizations forced President Barack Obama 14 years ago to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, to protect the 'Dreamers', who now face persecution by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

Reports from the organization United We Dream indicate that President Donald Trump's administration has detained more than 300 people with DACA, of whom it has deported at least 90, while complicating the defense of the detainees.

Such is the case of JeanCarlos Fiallos Manzanares, a resident of Miami Gardens, Florida, who has been in the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico for a year, almost 3,200 kilometers from his home in Florida, where he was detained after leaving one of his children with his grandparents.

Other cases have unleashed mobilizations by civil rights groups and immigrant advocates, such as that of María de Jesús Estrada Juárez, who was in the process of obtaining Legal Permanent Residence or Green Card and was arrested during an appointment before the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office, which has become a kind of “trap” for certain immigrants.

There are other notable cases just by name of the people, such as César, who arrived from Mexico at the age of four and built a career in corporate human resources and even though he renewed his DACA on December 6, 2025, months before its expiration – set for March 28, 2026 – he lost his job and currently sells burritos to pay his bills.

Claudia arrived in Southern California at the age of four and was selected as the first intern in a partnership between her community college and a Japanese biopharmaceutical company, coordinated with the Department of Labor, but in March, after 30 days of unpaid leave, she was fired. His DACA renewal had not arrived.

José Luis Contreras Díaz arrived in the United States when he was eight years old. He grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, applied for DACA in 2014 and complied with everything the program required of him for more than a decade, but in January 2025, the Trump administration arrested him during a routine check-in with immigration authorities and deported him to Honduras weeks before his son was born. His case took a positive turn when his deportation was declared illegal by a judge, so the government facilitated his return, but ICE arrested him again at the Harlingen airport, although he was released a week later, when he was finally able to hold his son.

DACA no longer protects from deportation

Since the beginning of the new Trump administration, ICE began to detain immigrants with DACA, which sparked severe criticism and legal challenges, but on April 24, 2025, the Department of Justice took an unexpected turn, as the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA): disqualify the protection created by Obama as an argument against deportation.

The decision came after an immigration judge ended a deportation case because the person had DACA, but when the government appealed, the BIA judges ruled in favor of the government and stated that the immigration judge should have considered the government's reasons for requesting deportation and included them in the written decision.

The National Immigration Law Center affirms that this decision by the BIA does not mean that DACA stops working as a protection for 'Dreamers', although in the current context it can complicate a person's defense.

“If a person with DACA is arrested and detained by immigration authorities or other law enforcement agencies and appears before an immigration judge, the judge could now examine their case more closely to comply with the BIA's decision,” immigration law experts acknowledge. “For this reason, it may be more difficult for them to get their case closed simply because they have DACA.”

The BIA's decision, added to the dozens of arrests of 'Dreamers', have worried immigrant defense organizations.

“While the Trump administration proclaimed that it was going after ‘criminals,’ the reality is that it is attacking those who try to comply with the law,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice. “DACA recipients trusted our government and came forward, and now they have become another cruel victim of the Trump administration’s delegitimization efforts, with no regard for the impact on our communities, our economy, or our families.”

Voices in defense of the 'Dreamers'

Organizations such as United We Deam (and the Home is Here movement) pressure Congress to approve the DREAM Act, whose project was integrated into practically every Legislature, with the most recent push being bipartisan by Democrat Dick Durbin (Illinois) and Republican Lisa Murkowski (Alaska).

The organization Fwd.us points out that DACA beneficiaries have created businesses, held key positions in health care areas – mainly during the Covid pandemic –, paid taxes and started families.

These people arrived, on average, when they were six years old and have lived in the US for more than 26 years.

“DACA is a resounding success, however, it is also under imminent attack, through a deliberate effort to delay and deny renewals, as well as an increase in arrests and deportations,” the organization notes. "Without a clear change of course, Dreamers will be among the targets, arrested and deported. These are not just statistics. These are people who woke up one morning, went to work, left their children at school and did not return home. [...] We demand the Trump administration reverse its attacks on the DACA program."