‘Dreamers’ Face Their Most Uncertain Moment Yet

As the court fight over DACA picks up later this month, advocates hope public pushback can protect the Dreamers again.

U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas), flanked by other Democratic members of Congress, speaks during a press conference to reintroduce the American Dream and Promise Act on February 26, 2025. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

DONALD TRUMP HAS TRIED to kill DACA before.

The Obama-era program that gave work authorization and temporary but renewable protection from deportation to immigrants brought to this country as children was thrown on the chopping block during Trump’s first term, when in September 2017 Attorney General Jeff Sessions publicly announced the program was unconstitutional and would soon be dead.

What happened next changed the political calculation of the White House.

The play-by-play was related in a New Yorker piece published shortly afterward under the title, “Is Ending DACA the Worst Decision Trump Has Made?” Even before Sessions’s announcement, administration officials privately expressed concern that Trump didn’t fully grasp the ramifications of what he was doing to the program, which had at that point had directly helped more than 800,000 immigrants. When Trump “began to register the enormous consternation his decision had caused,” he backed down, as he so often does when he meets real resistance to his actions. In one of many reversals, Trump abandoned the message he’d pushed Sessions to deliver about the program’s unconstitutionality and began to publicly stress that his phaseout was intended to give Congress “six months” to “legalize DACA.”

“If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!” he tweeted.

Eight years later, DACA is still here, but the program is dying by a thousand paper cuts, according to Democrats and the representatives of a constellation of immigrant-rights organizations that comprise the “Home is Here” coalition. The group recently organized a press call to explain in detail what they see as Trump 2.0’s full frontal assault on DACA.

A major pressing concern for those on the call: This summer, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of the Southern District of Texas, overseeing a long-running lawsuit from Texas and eight other states challenging the legality of DACA, solicited new legal briefs in the case. Among the questions Judge Hanen asked the briefs to examine is whether “it is legally permissible to treat DACA recipients in Texas differently from those outside the state,” as paraphrased in a memo provided to The Bulwark by FWD.us, which helped organize the call.

The court filings Judge Hanen solicited are expected in late September, with a briefing likely to follow in October; advocates for the program fear that continued legal stresses on the program could open the possibility “of the greatest threat to DACA . . . a new effort from the administration to end the policy through executive action,” the memo stated.

During the press call, Democrats and organizers signaled they will oppose these new threats using tactics that have worked in the past—namely, by taking the fight public. The goal is to make it uncomfortable for Trump and Republicans to continue pushing to take away Dreamers’ protections as they continue to pillage immigrant communities nationwide.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is likely to be at the forefront of that fight, in what is the swan song of his Senate career. Twenty-four years ago, he introduced the DREAM Act, and over a decade ago, he asked President Obama to do something via executive order to protect these young immigrants. He said the facts of the program and its eligibility criteria expose the lies the administration has repeatedly told the public about the targets of their immigration enforcement actions—namely, that they are going after only hardened criminals. Durbin noted that DACA recipients must go through background checks and have their status renewed every two years. Criminality is disqualifying.

“Some of the DACA recipients are policemen and law enforcement who make us safer. The idea that we are going to deport them is ridiculous, it’s sad and outrageous,” Durbin said on the call. “We’re going to continue this battle—it’s going to be a battle that we’re going to win in the churches, the meeting halls, the streets, in the restaurants, in Congress as well.”

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DURBIN’S CALL TO FIGHT BACK comes at a time when DACA recipients have increasingly found themselves targeted by this administration.

In July, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) arbitrarily escalated the threat to Dreamers by calling on DACA recipients to self-deport. Organizers also warned of an “alarming spike” in Dreamers being detained despite their DACA status, including activist Catalina “Xochitl” Santiago, a 28-year-old who was detained at the airport headed on a work trip. And Erick Hernandez, a DACA recipient from California, who now faces deportation after he missed his exit and accidentally crossed into Mexico during a rideshare shift this summer only weeks before his wife, a U.S. citizen, was set to give birth. His attorney alleges Customs and Border Patrol officials asked for a bribe to forget the whole thing.

DHS has responded by saying, “Illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of DACA are not automatically protected from deportations.”

Democrats released a letter Wednesday cowritten by Reps. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) and signed by ninety-three other Democrats condemns the rise of these wrongful detentions. Addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the letter went on to criticize the “blatant disregard” for the protections afforded to DACA recipients.

I asked Garcia on the call how she and her party are escalating this public fight beyond the letter, the call, and their support of the legal battle. She said that in addition to these actions, Democrats are continuing to fight back in committee hearings, on the House floor as they bat away anti-immigrant amendments, and in the public square by bringing attention to the staggering increase in funding for immigration enforcement allotted in Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which will bring $170 billion to ICE and related agencies—a massive expenditure balanced out by deep cuts to Medicaid.

“We’re in this fight all the time, and I know I continue to try to get the sponsors I need to bring the vote to the floor for the Dream and Promise Act. We have over 200 sponsors, we’re at 210, we need to be at 218 to force the vote,” Rep. Garcia said of her legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers. “More than anything, we want to let people know we know that they’re here, that we love them . . . it’s about the esperanza, the hope we’re trying to give to DACA recipients and immigrants hurt by these awful policies.”

Family members on the call spoke warmly of loved ones who were covered by DACA but have been detained anyway. They included Alejandra, the wife of Paulo Gomez, who was detained on August 13 and is now being held at the Otero detention center in New Mexico. Alejandra said that her husband was on his way to take one of his children to a doctor’s appointment when he was ambushed by agents.

They violently ripped him away in front of his children. It was only through the Ring camera at his mother’s home that I could hear the kids’ screams—crying out for their dad as strangers forced him into a car and disappeared with him. No family should ever have to endure that kind of terror.

I want you to know who Paulo is—not just the way ICE and this administration try to reduce him to a number. Paulo and I first met in the third grade. He has always been a kind, thoughtful, and dedicated person. He works hard every day to support his family. He is the dad who never misses a school event or doctor’s appointment. Our children adore him, and our entire community feels his absence deeply.

Alejandra added that she and Paulo have a three-month-old daughter. “No infant should be denied the love and comfort of their father, and no father should be forced to miss the earliest, most precious moments of his child’s life.”

Rep. Garcia said she and the Democrats and activists on the call would do anything they can to help Alejandra and her family, and she underscored the importance of people like Alejandra telling these stories.

“Your voices on the ground in this fight really matter,” Garcia said. “We’re here because the Trump administration is killing DACA, piece by piece.”

But Rep. Ramirez went further in calling on Democrats to meaningfully join the fight to protect the program, noting her own personal stake in the cause: Until recently, her husband was a Dreamer himself. Trump’s assault on DACA is being enabled by members of Congress who swore to defend DACA recipients but have done nothing as those recipients are increasingly targeted, she said.

“At this moment, every member of Congress has a choice to make,” she said.

Are you unapologetically pro-Dreamer? Or are you out here voting for resolutions to congratulate ICE for violating our rights?

Are you protecting those who dare to dream of a better life and have the courage to seek it out? Or are you too much of a coward to remember the dreams that led your ancestors to these shores?

Are you pushing back on the fearmongering that robs our neighbors of their dignity and questions their humanity? Or are you sitting quietly while Dreamers suffer?

She closed by saying that only solidarity, collective action, and purposeful organizing can lead to victory in the struggle for Dreamers, but also in our country’s larger fight against authoritarianism. That’s because the tactics used on DACA recipients will be used on other Americans soon enough.

“They will use them tomorrow,” she said, becoming emotional, “on anyone they consider undesirable.”