Dreamers Face ‘Greatest Threat’ Yet in Trump Immigrant Crackdown
The DACA program has survived years of political siege—but recent arrests have dreamers shocked and worried.
A PERSON’S LEGAL AUTHORIZATION TO WORK in the United States isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on—literally. That’s the upshot of actions taken by border patrol agents this week.
This past Sunday, Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a DACA recipient and Texas-based immigration activist for Movimiento Cosecha, was about to board a domestic flight out of El Paso when U.S. Border Patrol agents grabbed her. Even though she provided them with a work authorization document, they put her in detention. In response to press inquiries, the Department of Homeland Security said she had previously been charged with crimes, including possession of narcotics, and so could be deported, DACA status and work authorization notwithstanding.
Santiago is not the first “dreamer”—that is, a recipient of DACA1—to be arrested or detained this year. But the brazenness of the agents who detained her has alarmed immigration advocates and the DACA community.
DACA has been under attack for years, and its status as a presidential action rather than as a law leaves it vulnerable. Trump’s own comments about the program have swerved around over the years. Early in his first term he sometimes suggested he was open to finding a way to let dreamers stay in the country. But he also attempted to end the program outright—an attempt that the Supreme Court rebuffed in 2020 on procedural rather than substantive grounds.
After winning re-election last year, Trump indicated he still wants to take action, suggesting he would be open to protecting DACA recipients. “We have to do something about the dreamers because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age,” he said on Meet the Press in December. “And many of these are middle-aged people now. They don’t even speak the language of their country.”
But he has so far offered no such accommodation, and in the context of his overall immigration crackdown and mass-deportation regime, dreamers and supporters of the program view the current moment as dangerous.
“This definitely is the greatest threat yet,” Kerri Talbot, the executive director of the Immigration Hub, told me. “The DHS secretary should be ashamed. Catalina Santiago is a respected member of the community who has lived here for many years and has DACA. She should be released immediately.”
When earlier this week I spoke to Jose Antonio Vargas, a veteran immigration activist in his own right, he told me he spent an entire day having conversations with four DACA recipients who were blindsided and terrified by the news of Santiago’s detention. Two of them told him they had since made the decision to self-deport, while the other two said they were still trying to figure out what this latest unlawful act by the deportations-obsessed Trump administration might portend for them.
“I definitely think this is a huge turning point and something that should send shockwaves across the country of the threat and vulnerability of the DACA program at the current moment,” Anabel Mendoza, the communications director for immigrant youth–led advocacy organization United We Dream, told The Bulwark. “DACA recipients have been sharing with us what this moment means for them, and they’re genuinely worried about going to work and being kidnapped off the street and facing possible detention. What we’re seeing are the promises made under this program are being hollowed, weakened, and destroyed by the ICE abductions of DACA recipients.”
IT’S EASY TO FORGET not just the specific promises made to the recipients of DACA, but the larger promise represented by the program—that a new day for immigrants was coming.
In the Rose Garden on June 15, 2012, Barack Obama announced that DACA would make immigration policy in the United States “more fair, more efficient, and more just.”
These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they’re friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper. They were brought to this country by their parents—sometimes even as infants—and often have no idea that they’re undocumented until they apply for a job or a driver’s license, or a college scholarship.
Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you’ve done everything right your entire life—studied hard, worked hard, maybe even graduated at the top of your class—only to suddenly face the threat of deportation to a country that you know nothing about, with a language that you may not even speak.
It’s this promise of fairness from the U.S. government that the current administration is trying to forcibly break. Republicans, both MAGA and non, have argued for years that the DACA program shouldn’t exist—but having failed to undo it, they’re now resorting to a workaround: acting as though it doesn’t exist. What is a law worth if it has no enforcers? Santiago knows the answer to that question.
If you’re not yet a Bulwark+ member, consider joining today. You’ll be able to read our members-only newsletters, watch and listen to our locked podcasts, and join in comments and chats. Sign up today and your first 30 days are free:
Come see for yourself why the Bulwark community keeps growing.
SANTIAGO’S DETENTION MAY BE the most widely publicized immigration police action against a dreamer this year, but she’s not the first DACA recipient to have been subjected to the Trump administration’s overreach.
The most terrifying incident so far involved Javier Diaz Santana, whose story was reported in late July in a Los Angeles Times story that ran under the headline, “Deaf, mute and terrified: ICE arrests DACA recipient and ships him to Texas.”
Santana, who works at a car wash, became alarmed when he noticed people running; after attempting to flee, he realized an ICE raid was happening. When white SUVs rolled up next to him on the street and ICE agents poured out and walked towards him, he tried to pull his ID from his wallet to present his Real ID; an agent grabbed it out of his hands and did not return it. He then got out his phone to try to type a message about his disability, and an agent grabbed that out of his hands, too. He was left without a way to communicate with the men seizing him.
He spent nearly a month in detention.
“I’m Mexican, I know you can tell I’m Mexican, but I don’t know what you’re catching me for,” he said through a sign-language interpreter. “I was scared. I felt fear. What does that mean? I’m Mexican and you’re going to throw me out of the country?”
Now Santiago’s detention has sent a chill through DACA recipients, as well as the immigration activists who have worked with her. The cold wave of anxiety reached rural eastern North Carolina, where she had trained some activists for Siembra NC, an activist organization that works to protect local immigrants.
Jackie Ramirez, 22, an organizer for the group, told me two DACA recipients with whom she is very close have been waiting to hear back on their renewals. While they submitted everything on time, their permits have expired without any sign of action on the government’s part. This sort of bureaucratic passivity creates another way for fear to grow within the community as the risk of detention rises even for those attempting to do everything the right way.
And things are getting scary for immigration advocates in grassroots groups, many of whom believe they are a target for authorities. It’s a belief that is only getting harder to shake following Santiago’s arrest.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Ramirez told me. “This case specifically is going after DACA, but it’s also at the intersection of this woman fighting for immigrant rights, organizing for a better life. They’re not just coming for people who have tried to do things the right way but also people trying to make the world better for people. What message is being conveyed from the government to all of us right now?”
Ambush, misdirection, unlawful detentions: These are tactics used time and again by the administration’s immigration enforcers to meet arbitrary quotas.
For Mendoza with United We Dream, the larger strategic purpose communicated by the administration’s use of these tactics is clear.
“It’s obvious under this administration they’re going after anyone they don’t believe should be American,” she said.
The acronym DACA stands for “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” the name of an Obama-era policy that allows some people brought to the United States illegally as children to qualify for work permits and temporary, renewable protection from deportation. DACA recipients are called “dreamers” or “DREAMers” because a proposed law—the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act—would have created a statutory equivalent of DACA if it had been enacted.
The Mama Bear in me comes out when I see this. I know three DACA kids. They are all either in college making the grades and so hopeful, or they have careers going and are law-abiding members of society who pay taxes, and a real plus to our city. They were all brought to the USA as toddlers! If ICE comes for even one of them, I think I might have to go to jail or die trying to stop this evil from happening.
Why does anyone think that any brown or black people in this country are protected at this point? The Trump regime is building huge detention centers and hiring thousands of ICE agents (as well as using the FBI, local law enforcements and now, even FEMA employees!) to arrest “illegal” immigrants and others like DACA with only temporary status. Why would anyone think that Trump will stand up to Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and other toadies in this regime (because it is a regime, not an administration) since he will say anything to get the focus on him but not really mean it? He lies and lies and lies. So, these people have to fill up the detention centers (actually concentration camps), and the low-hanging fruit (namely, criminals and felons) are effectively close-to-non-existent. The border is shut down, but that isn’t enough, is it? This is going to get very, very ugly quickly. It is all so heart-rending; it outrages and depresses me because there are tens of millions of people out there cheering this on.