Immigration attorneys in New Mexico and nationwide say federal paperwork delays are making undocumented immigrants out of people long protected from deportation.
Processing times for renewals under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, increased more than sevenfold in the last fiscal year, federal data shows.
Unlike some other immigration pathways, there are no protections for those whose applications are pending, putting those awaiting adjudication by federal authorities at risk of losing work eligibility and protection from deportation.
“I understand the fear is palpable, but fear is the point,” Santa Fe immigration attorney Jessica Aguirre recalled saying to comfort a client who filed a renewal application in June, following the federal government’s recommendation, and whose status is set to expire in just a few weeks.
Facing the loss of a job and heightened risk of deportation, the client considered self-deporting or hiding at home, Aguirre said.
“This is what this administration wants you to do,” she added. “It wants you to be afraid.”
Advocates say the delays on the Obama-era program that extended protections and work eligibility to those who immigrated as minors are another example of the Trump administration targeting immigrants with legal protections as a means of raising deportation numbers to fit Trump’s promise and quota of mass deportations.
The DACA program closed to new recipients in 2017.
Aguirre, who works with Contigo Immigrant Justice, formerly the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, a nonprofit that began in 2014 to provide free legal services to the city’s DACA recipients, said the organization has clients who have waited nine to 10 months with no response. Others who submitted paperwork in August have already heard back.
“I think confusion is the goal,” she said.
New Mexican file photo
The cause of the delays is “a renewed emphasis on robust alien screening and vetting, eliminating policies the former administration implemented that prioritized aliens’ convenience ahead of Americans’ safety and security,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson Zach Kahler wrote in a statement Friday.
“It’s a commonsense measure to ensure appropriate vetting and screening has been completed before an alien’s employment authorization or documentation is extended,” he added. “Working in the United States is a privilege, not a right.”
By the numbers
The agency’s own data shows median processing times for DACA renewals rose from half a month in fiscal year 2025 to 3.7 months in fiscal year 2026, which began Oct. 1, 2025, and ended Sept. 30.
There were roughly 436,350 DACA recipients as of June, according to USCIS figures. The Migration Policy Institute estimates New Mexico had 4,130 active recipients as of December.
The program, established by former President Barack Obama through executive action in 2012 and never enshrined in statute, provides temporary work authorization and protection from deportation for immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before age 16. Recipients have lived in the country since at least 2007 and must file renewals with federal authorities every two years.
It provides no pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.
The federal government recommends recipients submit renewal applications 120 to 150 days before their status expires. Immigration attorneys around the country say some renewals are taking far longer.
For some other immigration processes, “simply putting your application in” is enough to gain protections, said Allegra Love, a Santa Fe immigration attorney who founded the Santa Fe Dreamers Project — now Contigo Immigrant Justice. Because it is not codified in congressional statute, she noted, the DACA program carries no such protection.
Love disputed the claim from the USCIS spokesperson regarding criminality, noting DACA recipients tend to maintain a “pristine” record to stay on the program, and it’s “a hair trigger to get kicked out.”
“It’s inhumane,” she added. “You can’t help but know it’s by design.”
New Mexican file photo
‘A huge challenge for their employers’
Trump tried to end the program during his first term and failed when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the cancellation on procedural grounds in 2020.
“I view this as a way to make DACA recipients vulnerable when the attempts to do it in court have failed,” Love said. “It’s like, ‘We haven’t yet succeeded in court. What tools do we have to hurt these individuals?’ ”
She said her clients facing expiration are reacting in a range of ways, including “cross your fingers and hope your employer doesn’t notice.” For those who have decided to stop working, attorneys say, local resources including the Santa Fe Faith Coalition’s fund for immigrant support have proven monumental.
For almost 15 years, DACA recipients have “not had to worry completely about being vulnerable to deportation,” she added. “But people falling out of status — it’s real now.”
State Sen. Cindy Nava, a Bernalillo Democrat and former DACA recipient elected Senate majority whip Sunday, said her office “has been bombarded with calls regarding DACA.”
Nava was 7 years old when she came to the U.S. from Chihuahua, Mexico, with her parents and siblings. She became a citizen in 2021 through marriage, what she called “the only pathway” toward citizenship from DACA.
Her siblings — a brother who is a police officer in Chicago and a banker who works locally, both in their 30s — remain on active DACA status.
“Being an immigrant is stressful,” she said. “Having your entire life be put on hold because of this renewal makes it really complicated.”
Matt Dahlseid/New Mexican file photo
Those who lose status lose work eligibility and, in many cases, healthcare along with it.
The state, Nava said, is not terminating employees who have lost work eligibility. Those working for private companies are not always so fortunate, she said; some have lost jobs and been thrust into legal limbo.
“It’s a huge challenge for them. It’s a huge challenge for their employers,” said Leonardo Castañeda, director of the Office of New Americans under the state’s Department of Workforce Solutions.
Castañeda couldn’t speak to Nava’s claim about state agencies, saying it would be “between that employee and their agency’s individual HR department,” and that his office has “no blanket guidance” for employers or agencies.
Employers have reached out, desperate to keep good employees but worried about federal fines or even criminal exposure for employing someone whose work eligibility has expired, he said.
To them, the office has provided guidance and explanation of the situation as being temporary and outside of local or state-level power.
Castañeda noted some employers have opted to treat the expiration as a temporary leave of absence from work.
“We don’t want this to be a deterrent from employers hiring the best people that they can to do these jobs,” he said.
Castañeda noted USCIS urges against filing in advance of its recommended window.
“They’re applying right at the window that USCIS tells them to apply for renewal,” he said. “So, it’s not even like, ‘Well, they should be applying even sooner.’ ”
Love estimated she has around 10 DACA clients working in public schools, early childhood education, dentistry, healthcare and food service.
“We have this fantasy that noncitizen workers are disposable,” she said. “And it’s just not the case across any industry.”
“We can all relate to how expensive it is to live in the United States right now,” Love added. “Losing your job when groceries cost and gas cost as much as they do — that can become a crisis very, very quickly.”
Remedies aren’t clear
There are limited paths of recourse, attorneys say.
One is the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, an oversight office gutted in March 2025 by then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, along with similar oversight offices for immigration detention and civil rights.
A DHS spokesperson at the time said the offices had “obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission.”
After advocacy groups sued, DHS told a federal court in May 2025 it would keep the offices open with smaller groups of staff, to little avail, Aguirre said.
She recounted waiting two to three months after sending the office a request for a DACA client, then receiving a response that “said something along the lines of, ‘The Office of the Ombudsman has received your request. At this time, we will not be taking any action.’ ”
“We have strayed away from recommending clients contact them,” Aguirre said.
Another option is suing the federal government for a writ of mandamus, a court order forcing the agency to process an application — an often lengthy process Love said is not realistic or affordable for the average working DACA recipient.
Attorneys are also turning to congressional offices, with varying degrees of success.
“The remedies to this aren’t clear. I mean, it’s why we’re calling congresspeople,” Love said.
Aside from serving as liaisons to urge the federal government to process applications through back channels, the state’s congressional delegation has also been vocal about the delays.
U.S. Rep Teresa Leger Fernández joined 54 other representatives to demand the agency process its applications in a timely manner, writing in a letter to USCIS Secretary Joseph Edlow the delays have “jeopardized the livelihood and financial stability of our constituents, impacting their well-being and ability to support their families.”
U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, another New Mexico Democrat, also demanded action. He wrote in a May statement that the agency “needs to fix these delays immediately before more families are thrown into fear and uncertainty.”
But, Love said, some of the blame still lies with Congress.
“As much as it is on a president, it’s also on those same congresspeople who are getting all these calls — because our Congress has failed over and over and over again to actually make this permanent protection for the people who deserve it,” she said.Immigration attorneys in New Mexico and nationwide say federal paperwork delays are making undocumented immigrants out of people long protected from deportation.
