Delays In DACA Renewals

On March 17, Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Dick Durbin led a group of colleagues in a letter to then Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow over delays in renewals for DACA. Applicants “who filed their renewals on time and in accordance with agency guidance are experiencing prolonged adjudication periods that extend beyond their current period of deferred action and employment authorization.”

In 2012, President Obama announced the creation of a program known as DACA (the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), which permitted young immigrants brought to the United States as children to remain temporarily in the country with two-year work visas. Ever since its announcement, DACA has been a target of Republicans hostile towards expanding immigration.

Between October 1, 2025, and February 28, 2026, the median wait for a DACA renewal ran about 70 days, up from roughly 15 days the previous fiscal year, the longest median wait since 2016, when it ran about 79 days. By the end of April, the agency was reporting that the majority of renewals were being completed within about 122 days, two weeks longer than the figure it had posted earlier that same month.

USCIS itself tells recipients to file 120 to 150 days before their status expires. When processing exceeds that window, recipients who filed on time lose their protections before the renewal is decided.

The Backlog

Roughly 25,600 renewals were pending in September 2025, the most recent figure USCIS has released. The agency has not said how many recipients have lost their work permits while waiting, and when CNN asked whether its recent changes had slowed processing, it did not directly answer.

USCIS completed 2.7 million cases in the second quarter of fiscal year 2025, an 18 percent drop from the same period a year earlier. Over the rest of the fiscal year, the active DACA population fell from 525,210 recipients on March 31, 2025 to about 505,900 by the end of September 2025.

One likely reason for the DACA delays is that USCIS has spent the past year adding additional screening steps. In a March 30 alert, the agency said it had begun “shortening validity periods for certain Employment Authorization Documents to require more frequent security checks,” increasing “social media and financial vetting and community interviews,” and “requiring final arrest encounter reviews and Department of State Consular Consolidated Database checks before final adjudication.” The National Immigration Law Center, in its own guidance, notes that USCIS reports most renewals now take about 3.5 months and urges recipients to call their members of Congress when a case stalls.

What Texas Stands to Lose

Texas holds the second-largest DACA population in the country, and counts 87,890 recipients in the state. The American Immigration Council estimates that Texas's roughly 221,000 DACA-eligible residents earn $8.2 billion in household income and pay nearly $2 billion in combined federal, state, and local taxes a year.

When it comes to DACA, Texas is also in a very unique position. In a January 17, 2025 decision, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the work-authorization piece of DACA unlawful, but separated it from the program’s protection against deportation, and confined the ruling to Texas because Texas was the only state to prove it had suffered financial harm. The court left an existing stay in place so current recipients could keep renewing, and no party appealed to the Supreme Court by the May 20, 2025 deadline, which makes the ruling final.

The case now sits with U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in the Southern District of Texas, who has to decide how to carry it out. Last September, the federal government laid outs its proposal: tie work authorization and lawful presence to the address a recipient keeps on file with USCIS, pull a Texas recipient’s work permit with as little as 15 days notice, and apply the same revocation to anyone who moves into the state. Hanen has set no deadline for his ruling, and for now Texans with DACA can still renew their status and their work permits.

Even with some protections, many DACA recipients have experienced a rise in arrests. Between January and November 2025, federal immigration authorities have arrested at least 261 DACA recipients, 75 in Texas. “DACA does NOT confer any form of legal status in this country,” DHS has said in public statements. “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.” On April 24, 2026, the Board of Immigration Appeals also issued a precedent decision i holding that DACA status alone does not stop removal.

The Other Restrictions

The renewal delay is one of several restrictions Texas recipients face at once. The Texas Dream Act, which let undocumented students who grew up in the state pay in-state tuition, ended in June 2025 when a federal judge struck it down within hours of a Justice Department filing that Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office had backed. Since then, the state has also moved to stop issuing, renewing, or reissuing commercial driver's licenses to refugees, asylees, and DACA recipients.

Senators Dick Durbin and Lisa Murkowski reintroduced the Dream Act in December, the latest in a string of versions that have stalled in Congress for more than two decades. Until any bill passes, Texans with DACA must depend on a two-year renewal cycle that USCIS is now processing more slowly, in a state that has already begun restricting their work permits.