DHS Press Sec. Tyler Houlton announced that the agency will not arrest current DACA recipients with pending renewal applications or those with expired protections. Additionally, USCIS will continue to accept new renewal applications.
The Trump Administration announced an end to Pres. Obama’s unconstitutional DACA executive amnesty program on Sept. 5, 2017. At that time, the Administration stopped adjudicating new DACA requests and announced that it would only process renewal applications that were set to expire before March 5, 2018 until October 5, 2017. But rulings by federal judges in both California and New York placed an injunction on the Trump Administration’s halting of the program, and as a result, USCIS restarted the adjudication of renewal applications in January.
With regard to enforcement actions against current and expiring DACA recipients, DHS has repeatedly stated that, absent additional negative factors, DACA recipients are not a priority or target group for arrest or removal ... an individual who is a current DACA recipient, or who was a previous DACA recipient but has filed for renewal, will not be targeted for arrest nor will be removed from the United States while the individual has DACA protections or while the DACA renewal request is pending.
Even though, 132,440 of the 154,230 eligible DACA recipients filed for renewal before the October 2017 cut off, the federal judges' rulings allows over 535,000 DACA recipients with expired protections to file for renewal.
For more on this story, see Washington Examiner.
