Washington, D.C. — As the nation and hundreds of thousands of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients await a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on the legality of the Trump administration’s termination of DACA, a new column published today by the Center for American Progress highlights the stakes of the decision and what the Trump administration must do if the court allows it to end DACA.
Should the Supreme Court rule for the government, the administration likely will have the power to preserve the status quo and continue accepting and processing DACA renewal applications or to automatically extend protections for those with upcoming expiration dates. Over the course of the next year, more than 340,000 individuals stand to lose DACA protections if the administration fails to act.
Among the key findings of the column:
- Today, there are nearly 650,000 individuals who currently hold DACA and could lose their protections—all at once or over a period of two years—depending on how the Supreme Court rules and what the administration does.
- Through the end of March, 23,020 DACA recipients with April, May, and June expirations had yet to apply to renew their protections.
- If DACA recipients lose the ability to renew their protections, nearly 1 in 5 DACA recipients—119,620—will have lost their protections by November 2020.
“The impact of DACA recipients in all our communities across the United States is clear, and that is why DACA has tremendous support from the American public,” says Nicole Prchal Svajlenka, associate director for research on the Immigration Policy team at CAP and author of the column. “Should the court give the Trump administration the green light to end DACA amid the worse public health crisis in history, it lands on the administration’s shoulders to continue to protect DACA recipients from arrest and deportation until Congress can find a permanent solution.”
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For more information or to speak to an expert, please contact Claudia Montecinos at [email protected].