The Trump administration has found a new way to hollow out DACA without formally ending it
More than 500,000 Dreamers now face a harsher reality as the administration turns bureaucratic power into a quieter deportation machine.
A new precedent-setting decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative court within the Justice Department, says that having active DACA status is not, by itself, sufficient to terminate deportation proceedings. In other words, the federal government has made it easier to keep Dreamers in removal proceedings even while they still hold the very status that was supposed to shield them from deportation.
NPR reported that the ruling came in the case of Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago and sends her case back to an immigration judge for further review. El País also reported that the decision gives fresh momentum to the deportation of DACA recipients under Trump’s second term.
The ruling does not mean every DACA recipient will be deported tomorrow. It does, however, mean that one of the clearest practical assumptions about DACA has been weakened by the administration’s own court apparatus. NPR reported that the BIA found an immigration judge had erred by terminating Santiago’s case solely because she had active DACA status. This means DACA can still exist on paper while offering less protection in practice. And that is exactly the kind of bureaucratic rollback immigrant advocates have been warning about for months.
As of September 2025, about 505,900 people in the United States had active DACA status, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Mexico accounts for by far the largest share, followed by El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. At the same time, California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and New York remain the states with the largest DACA populations.
The Santiago case shows exactly how precarious this has become.
According to NPR, Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago’s case drew national attention after she was detained by Customs and Border Protection officers while boarding a domestic flight at the El Paso airport in August. She spent weeks in immigration detention before a federal judge ordered her release, and she has been fighting deportation through the immigration court system ever since.
The BIA ruling does not automatically result in her deportation. Still, it does side with the Department of Homeland Security on the key point that DACA status alone does not justify shutting down removal proceedings. That is the precedent that now reaches far beyond her case.
Over the last year, attorneys for ICE and DHS have increasingly appealed decisions to the BIA, and the board backed government lawyers in 97% of publicly posted cases. Similarly, the board has also made it harder for immigration courts to offer bond in lieu of detention, and easier to deport migrants to countries other than their own. It is operating alongside a proposed regulation that would make immigration appeals harder overall.
That is why Congressmember Delia Ramirez’s warning is bone-chilling.
Speaking to Democracy Now!, Ramirez called the BIA ruling “very concerning” and described it as part of a larger effort to “weaponize the court system” against immigrants. She also pointed to the deeper cruelty of the policy, which is that many DACA recipients have been here since they were toddlers or young teenagers and know no other home but the United States.
DACA recipients were brought here as children, built their lives here, and were told for more than a decade that this temporary protection, while fragile, still meant something. Now the government is using its own administrative courts to drain even that promise of its force.
And if anyone still wants to pretend that active DACA status is functioning like a real shield, the recent case of María de Jesús Estrada Juárez should end that illusion.
The Guardian reported last month that Estrada Juárez, a DACA recipient who had lived in the United States for more than 27 years, was deported to Mexico after being arrested during a green card appointment in Sacramento. A federal judge later ruled that the deportation was unlawful and ordered the government to bring her back.
She described being handcuffed in front of her daughter, deported within 24 hours, and left trying to understand how a system she had tried to follow could turn on her so abruptly.
DACA has always been temporary. It has never provided a path to citizenship or permanent legal status. But that legal fragility is now being used as a weapon.
NPR reported that DHS had already begun urging DACA recipients to self-deport last year. At the same time, the administration has also moved against their access to benefits such as the federal health care marketplace. Newsweek reported that then Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told senators that 261 DACA recipients were arrested and 86 were removed between January and November of last year.
There is another layer to this story, and it is about the courts themselves.
The Washington Post reported this week that the Justice Department has fired more than 100 immigration judges since Trump returned to office and replaced many of them with new hires who often have less immigration law experience and less training.
According to that reporting, asylum grants have plunged, denials have surged, and former judges and legal experts are warning that due process is being eroded in favor of a judiciary more aligned with the administration’s deportation agenda.
And that is the real story here.
Trump does not always need one dramatic announcement to gut an immigration program. The program still exists, technically. But the floor beneath it keeps giving way.