Immigrant advocacy and legal aid groups sued the Trump administration Thursday, demanding answers about “severe delays” in renewals for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients that are causing people to lose their jobs, livelihoods and legal immigration status.
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Under DACA, over half a million qualified undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as young children are allowed to work and study in the country where they were raised without fear of deportation. But thousands of them have had their status lapse because of delayed renewals, which must occur every two years, resulting in the loss of their work permits and leaving them more vulnerable to detention and deportation.
The delays have stopped a 26-year-old graduate from a top medical school from beginning his residency in anesthesiology while his DACA review is pending, according to the complaint, filed Thursday against ICE and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Another DACA recipient who graduated from an orthopedic surgery fellowship in New York has been unable to work since February and cannot begin his role at an underserved medical center in rural Pennsylvania later this year as he waits for his renewal, the lawsuit said.
A 30-year-old man from Mexico who isn’t a party to the lawsuit told NBC News he was able to pursue a career in nursing after he obtained DACA shortly after it was implemented by the Obama administration. He said all of his previous renewals typically took about four to six weeks. But this time, his status lapsed, and he has had to take unpaid leave for three months from his job at a hospital while he waits for his renewal, which he applied for more than five months ago.
“It’s affected every facet of my life,” he said. The DACA recipient spoke on condition of anonymity because of his fears around his immigration status.
He said he has had to “dip into all the savings that I have” and rely on assistance from family members and friends to make ends meet while not knowing how long he will be unable to work.
After more than a decade of having legal status in the U.S., he is fearful he could be swept up in the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.
“When I leave my apartment, I sometimes have to think really long and hard that maybe today’s the day that I don’t come back,” he said.
Two legal aid organizations filed the lawsuit Thursday, calling for answers from the government over the policies and changes related to DACA renewal requests, including data on current average processing times, renewals and the length of time to process them. The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California.
Hillary Li, counsel with the Justice Action Center, filed the lawsuit on behalf of East Bay Sanctuary Covenant and the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, both of which serve DACA recipients who have faced delays and status lapses as clients.
Li said that apart from the legal aid organizations, there have been similar stories “from legal service providers all over the country.”
“For the years that DACA has been in place, renewals have been fairly reliable. But now, for so many months, we’re seeing these delays cause people to fall out of status — that means that folks are losing their jobs, they’re losing their ability to support their families,” Li said. “They’re also losing their protection against deportation.”
The two groups told NBC News they filed information requests on May 7 asking USCIS and ICE why DACA recipients who applied for renewal around October and November are still waiting an unusually long time for an answer.
After USCIS and ICE blew past their June 5 deadline to respond to the information request, the groups are now suing to force the federal government to provide clarity.
“Is it a short-term fluke and it will be fixed, or is it something that is going to last?” said Catherine Seitz, legal director at the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area. “We need to know so that we can inform clients.”
Multiple DACA recipients recently told NBC News that while the renewal process was previously painless for them and would normally take less than six weeks, this year they have seen monthslong delays.
Shiori Akimoto, the immigration legal services program manager at East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, said she has been working with DACA clients since President Barack Obama created the program via executive order in 2012. Since then, there has always been a predictable pattern to renewals. After having seen clients with months of delays, recently Akimoto has some clients who filed to renew their DACA protection in April and May and got their approvals within six weeks.
“We just don’t know why USCIS is adjudicating in this way. It’s just so random,” Akimoto said.
In New York City, Angel Ortega filed for renewal about 110 days before his DACA-issued work permit was set to expire last month. He is still waiting for an answer. Ortega said the situation is “making us feel uncomfortable, unsafe and puts a strain on us financially.”
Ortega, a physical education teacher at a public school, also coaches track and field and cross country when classes aren’t in session. For the first time in six years, he sat at home jobless on a Wednesday afternoon. “It’s such an unfair situation,” he said.
Ortega recalled having already been trained as a 3-year-old in Mexico to cut alfalfa and become a farmworker, the only job all members of his family had ever held. “I was basically going to be brought up as a ‘workhand’” instead of attending school or pursuing academics or sports, he said.
His mother brought him to New York City in 1994 when he was 4 years old, he said, so they would have a better life. Ortega graduated from high school as an accomplished student-athlete and through his DACA status was able to earn a college degree and become a teacher.
Since his status lapsed, Ortega started a GoFundMe in case his renewal doesn’t come in time for the new semester. If that happens, he dreads trying to explain to his students why he can’t teach them.
“All I want to do is be a teacher and help kids,” Ortega said. “I have a place in this country.”
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that DACA recipients “are not automatically protected from deportations.”
“DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country,” the agency said. “Any illegal alien who is a DACA recipient may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons including if they’ve committed a crime.”
According to USCIS’ website, the current median processing time for DACA renewals in 2026 is 2.7 months, up from half a month in 2025, 1.8 months in 2024 and one month in 2023. But the legal aid groups and DACA recipients who spoke to NBC News said they have been waiting at least five months.
“We continue to adjudicate the majority of DACA renewal requests within 120 days and make every effort to efficiently process these requests as we receive them,” USCIS says on its website.
A court ruling this year determined that all current DACA recipients can keep their deportation protections and work authorizations as long as they meet the requirements and renew their status. But the Trump administration has been arresting and deporting recipients. A decision last month from the Board of Immigration Appeals said judges can’t solely use a DACA recipient’s status as a reason to stop deportation proceedings.
