Eva Santos Veloz spent her days walking New York City neighborhoods, attending community meetings, and occasionally traveling out of state for her job as a community affairs organizer at a local nonprofit. Since mid-February, she has not worked. Her work permit, tied to the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, expired after 143 days without being renewed. The process historically took roughly six weeks and averaged three months before renewals were digitized.
DACA, created under President Obama, grants temporary deportation protection to certain undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. Recipients can apply for an Employment Authorization Document, valid for the duration of their protected status, which must be renewed every two years; without it, they cannot legally work and lose their shield against removal. The renewal backlog comes during a broader immigration enforcement surge: as Bushwick Daily reported on June 4, city court records show that 76 percent of people swept up in the Trump administration’s New York immigration enforcement actions had no criminal record.
As of September 30, 2025, the most recent available figures showed 505,940 active DACA recipients nationwide, with 19,580 of them in New York state, according to reporting by Documented. More than 250 DACA recipients have been arrested by ICE since Trump returned to office. Federal immigration enforcement in Bushwick has drawn sustained scrutiny, including an incident Bushwick Daily covered in which ICE agents removed a handcuffed man from a neighborhood emergency room.
“I don’t understand why, after 12 years of the program, it’s now worse than at the beginning,” Santos Veloz told Documented, whose June 4 report was republished in New York Hispano. “I never thought I’d go almost two months with my work permit expired.” She is the primary breadwinner for her three children and her mother, and said she is relying on savings to get by. In April, she skipped a family gathering in California, afraid to be stopped at the airport now that her DACA protections had lapsed. “I have a son who’s going to start college this year. I have my mother,” she said. “I don’t know how long it will take to get a response. Everything is in limbo.”
Giancarla C., 39, a Department of Justice-accredited legal representative, was placed on work leave on April 10 after her permit expired, despite having submitted a renewal application on November 23, 158 days earlier. Before her leave, she supervised roughly 200 clients, including U visa cases for crime victims, asylum petitions, and other immigration filings. Her colleagues absorbed many of those cases and had to rebuild client trust amid widespread misinformation circulating online. “Many clients hear things on TikTok or other places. There’s a lot of alarmism,” she said.
Giancarla said she stopped driving to her gym or taking her dog to a park 30 minutes from her apartment out of fear of encountering ICE agents. “Fortunately, the supermarket is next to my building,” she said. “I wake up and feel like I have nothing to do. I just walk my dog around the neighborhood.” Santos Veloz, who previously attended and helped organize protests as part of her job, said she has pulled back entirely. “I’m always outside protesting. But I haven’t participated in any protest because I’m very afraid,” she said. “Now I’m hiding in a way I never did before.” She said she knows other DACA recipients who have moved out of their neighborhoods because of ICE activity, and she referenced Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who she said were killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis this year, as evidence that even people who try to support and protect the community now face danger.
Pedro Chávez, an immigration attorney whose clients include DACA recipients facing permit expirations, told Documented he believes the delays are deliberate. “It’s a slow death, as people say,” Chávez said, recalling that direct court challenges to DACA during Trump’s first term failed. “The courts have said there’s no way to end DACA. So he’s looking for ways to eliminate this program to generate panic and stress and for people to leave the country.” Chávez also warned that lapsed DACA status can trigger the accumulation of unlawful presence, which, depending on duration, can bar a person from reentering the United States for three to 10 years unless they obtain an immigration waiver (a process that can take years). “They did everything right,” he said of his clients. “They sent their applications and requested renewal 150 days before their permits expired. But now the deadline is approaching and soon they won’t be able to work.”
USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler told Documented that “under President Trump’s leadership, USCIS is protecting the American people through more thorough vetting and verification of all aliens, which may extend processing times. DACA does not grant any type of legal status in this country.”
On April 20, 16 members of Congress sent a letter to USCIS Director Joseph Edlow demanding answers about the renewal delays and asking what changed in the process since December 2024, when President Biden was still in office. “The Trump administration slowly processes DACA renewals intentionally,” the letter stated. “This has caused high levels of anxiety and uncertainty among Dreamers and has caused some to lose their jobs due to the expiration of their status caused by the delays. Furthermore, the expiration of their DACA due to these processing times also exposes them to the risk of deportation, affecting their families, communities, and workplaces.”
The delays also coincide with a new ruling from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in a case called Matter of Santiago-Santiago, issued in late April. The case centered on Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a DACA recipient in El Paso who was arrested at a U.S. airport and placed in removal proceedings. An immigration judge had closed her deportation case on the basis of her DACA status; the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appealed. The BIA ruled that an immigration judge cannot close a deportation case solely because a respondent holds DACA without first considering any government opposition to that closure. Chávez said the ruling narrows a tool immigration judges previously used to close cases for DACA recipients, increasing their legal vulnerability in removal proceedings as their work permits are lapsing.
Featured image: Courtesy newyorkhispano.net
