U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, alongside 40 Senate Democrats, is urging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to resume processing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applications across the nation. This call comes in light of a recent Fifth Circuit Court ruling that limited the suspension of DACA solely to Texas.
On January 17, three days before President Donald Trump took office, the Fifth Circuit upheld a district court decision declaring the DACA program unlawful but confined the ruling’s impact to Texas, the only state demonstrating injury from the Biden administration’s final rule codifying the 2012 DACA memorandum. The court’s ruling took effect on March 11.
Despite this, DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has yet to publicly announce whether it will begin processing new DACA applications or resume action on more than 100,000 initial applications pending for years, according to data from the first quarter of fiscal 2025.
In a letter addressed to Angelica Alfonso-Royals, acting USCIS director, Senator Durbin and his colleagues emphasized the urgent need to restart application processing nationwide to protect the rights and futures of DACA recipients.
“Pursuant to the court’s order, DACA must resume in Texas as a limited program protecting current recipients from deportation, though without work authorization or driver’s license renewals,” the Senators noted. “It is critical that USCIS begins processing all pending applications across the country without further delay.”
The DACA program, established in 2012, provides temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to more than 825,000 individuals who were brought to the U.S. as children.
The original lawsuit, filed by Texas and six other states in May 2018, challenged the program’s legality. In January, the Fifth Circuit panel affirmed that the final rule was “materially identical” to the Obama-era memo vacated by the Southern District of Texas, citing Congressional immigration statutes as overriding the program’s framework.
Representatives for USCIS have not yet responded to requests for comment.
