By Mia Hilkowitz and Tristan E. M. Leach/News21

Posted September 25, 2025

 

 

On Christmas her junior year of high school, A.L.E. sat around the tree, ready to open gifts. When her mom handed her a box, telling her it was a “big present,” the then-16-year-old expected a new pair of shoes.

 

Instead, she found an envelope. Inside was her Employment Authorization Document card, confirming she had been approved for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA.

 

Seven years later, she holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of North Texas, works at a law firm as a paralegal, and hopes to go back to school to study immigration and constitutional law.

And yet, she still has no permanent legal status to remain in the United States.

 

“I have dreams. I want to be able to work,” said the 24-year-old, who asked not to be identified because she worries any publicity could affect her chance at one day obtaining permanent legal status.

 

“This was supposed to be temporary,” she said of the DACA program. “But it’s just an ongoing cycle where every two years you have to renew, you have to pay the fee, you have to make sure that you don’t get in trouble – you don’t get a parking ticket – in case something comes up and they’re like, ‘No.’”

 

DACA turned 13 in June. The Obama-era program, which allows those brought into the U.S. illegally as children to stay and work, was never meant to be more than a stopgap on the pathway to conditional permanent residence, and ultimately citizenship, for those known as Dreamers.

Since 2012, about 835,000 people have been protected by DACA. But the program, along with the 525,000 immigrants who are still part of it, remains in limbo as the Trump administration implements a sweeping immigration agenda.

 

In 2017, during his first term, President Donald Trump tried to terminate DACA, though the U.S. Supreme Court blocked that.

 

Prior to taking office the second time, Trump expressed a willingness to find a solution for Dreamers. Since then, he has provided few specifics about his stance or plans for DACA, but his administration has taken steps to curtail protections for Dreamers.

 

In late August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reversed a 2024 policy that made DACA recipients eligible for medical insurance under the Affordable Care Act; some 11,000 people are expected to lose coverage.

 

Trump also issued an executive order challenging laws that allow in-state tuition for college students who are in the country illegally. The U.S. Department of Justice has since sued to end such policies in several states, including Kentucky, Minnesota and Texas.

Today, the average age of a DACA holder is 31, according to federal data, and almost a third of active recipients are married. Some 88% of the initial DACA recipients from 2012 are in the labor force, according to the advocacy organization FWD.us, and 49% of those recipients have at least some college education.

 

“DACA recipients are part of the fabric of our communities and American in every way but on paper,” said Anabel Mendoza, communications director for United We Dream, which advocates for immigrant youth.

 

DACA recipient Zak Galindo of Conroe, Texas, is one of the success stories of the program.

 

At 17, Galindo obtained his license to be a barber, one of the few jobs in Texas that did not have a residency requirement. The job provided him with financial stability, allowing him to pursue a degree in business from Sam Houston State University.

 

Before graduating college, Galindo applied for and obtained DACA. The 38-year-old now owns two barbershops, a coffee shop, and a bakery and deli. He employs 70 people with help from his wife, Sophie, who moved to the U.S. from England as a girl.

 

“I wouldn’t have what I have now, wouldn’t be where I am now, if it wasn’t for DACA,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been blessed.”

 

He shares his story publicly to help people understand “this is what a DACA recipient looks like.”

 

“It’s people that don’t cause any trouble, went to school,” Galindo said. “They’re good people.”

 

Galindo has applied to become a naturalized citizen – like his wife of three and a half years. But the uncertainty of not having permanent status has forced the couple to put off their dreams of starting a family.

 

“I still have DACA through the end of the year, but nothing’s guaranteed – and so hopefully everything goes as planned, and then we can start having some babies next year,” Galindo said. “We’re just kind of sitting in limbo in the meantime.”

 

Despite the protections DACA should offer, some recipients worry about being swept up in the administration’s mass deportation efforts.

 

In March, federal agents detained and then immediately deported DACA holder Evenezer Cortez Martínez of Roeland Park, Kansas, after he returned from a visit to México due to his grandfather’s death.

 

Cortez Martínez’s DACA was valid through 2026, and he’d been granted advance parole – permission to travel abroad and then return to the U.S. Agents deported him anyway, citing a 2024 removal order that Cortez Martínez said he was not aware of.

 

The father of three eventually was allowed to return. Though there have been few reported cases of people with DACA or advance parole being detained, Cortez Martínez’s lawyer, Rekha Sharma-Crawford, advises DACA holders not to travel out of the country, even with permission.

 

The “breakneck speed at which the policies are changing” is causing too much uncertainty, she said. “It’s just not safe for anyone right now.”

 

Legal challenges spanning more than a decade have also left Dreamers on unsteady ground.

 

A 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision effectively barred the Obama administration from expanding DACA. After another court decision, the government in 2021 stopped processing first-time applicants. While current recipients can still renew, FWD.us estimates some 500,000 people are eligible for DACA but can’t have their applications processed.

 

The program has faced further setbacks in Texas, home to nearly 88,000 active DACA recipients – second only to California’s 147,000.

 

In January, a federal court ruled that part of the DACA program is unlawful but limited its finding to Texas, which argued that providing emergency medical services, social services and public education to recipients had cost the state more than $750 million.

 

Texas DACA holders are still protected from deportation, but the decision opened the door for the state to end work authorization. A district court judge will decide how the ruling should be implemented.

 

“It’s sad how we’re 13 years later, and we’re still going through the same process. I mean, by this time, we all deserve a pathway to citizenship,” said A.L., a 27-year-old San Antonio resident who has twice tried – and failed – to get DACA.

 

A.L., who asked to be identified by initials because she fears becoming a target of immigration agents, came to the U.S. from Aguascalientes, Mexico, with her family in 1999. She was 9 months old.

 

She’s consulted with a lawyer about other ways to gain legal status; their advice was that marriage would be her fastest route. A.L. has thought about returning to México, but she said her parents brought her to the U.S. to give her a better future – and she intends to build that future in America, despite the obstacles.

 

“I guess you can say this is my life – it’s been my life since I was a baby,” she said. “This is where I grew up, and if I fought this hard to be here, I’m not going to give it up to go back.”

 

The American Immigration Council, an immigration advocacy group, estimates DACA recipients pay more than $5 billion in federal taxes and $3 billion in state and local taxes each year.

 

In Texas alone, the group reports, DACA-eligible residents contribute $2 billion in taxes and $6.2 billion in spending power – money that could be lost if recipients can’t work.

 

“That’s what is at stake here,” said Juan Carlos Cerda, a DACA recipient who serves as Texas state director for the American Business Immigration Coalition. “It’s jobs, and it’s the economic contributions.”

 

Many Texas recipients are weighing whether to move out of state so they can keep working, Cerda said, adding that he has heard from concerned employers as well.

 

“Employers have been coming to private discussions to discuss options to take and how to get engaged, and the solution here is for Congress to take action,” he said. “It’s an executive order, and it needs to become law.”

 

Since 2001, lawmakers have introduced at least 20 versions of the “DREAM Act” to provide Dreamers with conditional permanent residency, which they could use to meet naturalization requirements. None has passed, and the latest version of the bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Sylvia García, a Texas Democrat, has received no committee vote since it was introduced in February.

 

“I’m waiting, and I’ll wait patiently,” García said, “because it’s about getting it done (for) these Dreamers who’ve been here – no other country but this one in their heart, their soul, in their mind.”

 

Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, which provides college scholarships to students in the country without legal permission, said advocates are trying to convey to lawmakers that it shouldn’t matter which political party is in control to get something passed.

 

“If Donald Trump was to happen to be the one that signs the DREAM Act … I’ll be the first one standing behind him, applauding the fact that it got done,” she said. “At this point, politics shouldn’t matter.”

 

Yet another bill introduced in July by U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican, and Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat, would provide a pathway to lawful permanent residency for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. “The Dignity Act,” which includes other, sweeping immigration reforms, remains in committee.

 

For A.M., a 24-year-old living near Houston who obtained DACA when he was 15, growing up in Texas without legal status has always been “scary,” regardless of who’s in the White House.

 

“There’s always been that constant fear … that at any moment you could be detained and deported,” he said.

 

His family moved to the U.S. from Tamaulipas, México, when he was 3, and DACA is the only thing protecting him from deportation. He considered applying for an employment-based visa, but an attorney advised him to stick with DACA instead. His little brother is a U.S. citizen but too young to sponsor him for a green card. The only other option for a family-based petition is through marriage to a U.S. citizen.

 

For now, A.M. plans to keep renewing DACA, though he’s hopeful that Congress will pass the DREAM Act. He thinks everyday Texans would support the bill even if their Republican congressmembers don’t.

 

What helps him stay positive, he said, “is recognizing my worth here in the country, how much I’ve contributed to the lives of others and how much they’ve contributed to my life, as well.

“I still matter. My existence still matters.”

 

A.L.E. was just 5 when her family moved from Ciudad Juárez, México, to the Lone Star State. Fort Worth is home to everything she holds dear: her parents, her two younger sisters, her boyfriend and her closest friends.

 

Texas is the only home she knows.

 

Now, she wants to attend law school in Texas so she can stay near her two younger sisters, both U.S. citizens. But with the state likely to end work authorization for DACA recipients, she wouldn’t be able to save for tuition or pay her bills. She said she’d have to go elsewhere.

 

“My community is here, and I don’t want to leave that because of something that a politician has decided they don’t like or does not fit into their agenda,” she said.

 

It remains unclear how a judge will implement the court ruling against DACA and work authorization in Texas. But the state’s DACA holders could face the same dilemma: Stay with their friends and families, or leave to be able to work.

A.L.E. is cautiously hopeful that lawmakers will act under Trump to protect Dreamers. And she has no plans to stop fighting for a chance to live out her life in America.

 

“At a certain point, we didn’t have DACA,” she said. “We had to advocate for it. We had to go to the streets. We had to go to Congress and be like, ‘You need to give us something now. … You need to help us.’

 

“So I think that’s something that we need to think about – to just stay open-minded and stay hopeful and just not give up.”

 

 

Mia Hilkowitz and Tristan E.M. Leach /News21. News21 reporter Hannah Psalma Ramírez contributed to this report. This report is part of “Upheaval Across America,” an examination of immigration enforcement under the second Trump administration produced by Carnegie-Knight News21. For more stories, visit https://upheaval.news21.com/.