A decision by the Justice Department could make it easier for the Trump administration to pursue deportation cases against some immigrants protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, according to a new ruling.
The decision, issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), clarifies that immigration judges cannot terminate deportation proceedings solely because a person has active DACA status.
The underlying case involved Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a DACA recipient who was taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection officers while attempting to board a domestic flight at El Paso airport in August. Santiago was placed in removal proceedings following an arrest that prompted immigration enforcement review.
An immigration judge initially dismissed the case, citing her DACA status, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appealed.
Newsweek has contacted the Department of Justice for comment via email.
DOJ Ruling Expands Deportation Reach
The BIA is an administrative appellate court within the Justice Department. After an immigration judge issues a decision, both the individual and DHS may appeal the ruling to the BIA. Its published decisions help establish precedent for immigration judges nationwide and influence how immigration law and policy are interpreted.
The order issued on Friday marks the latest action by the Trump administration to reduce protections for DACA recipients.
DACA, created in 2012, provides temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to certain immigrants brought to the United States as children. However, it does not grant lawful immigration status, and recipients remain subject to removal if they commit crimes under federal law.
Santiago’s case has drawn widespread attention. After her arrest in August, she remained in immigration detention until a federal judge ordered her release in October, and she has continued to challenge the deportation proceedings in immigration court.
The BIA’s ruling that DACA status alone is not sufficient to terminate removal proceedings sides with DHS and sends the case back to an immigration judge for further review.
A senior DHS official previously told Newsweek: “CBP arrested Catalina Santiago, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, on August 3, 2025, at the El Paso International Airport. Her criminal history includes charges for trespassing, possession of narcotics and drug paraphernalia.”
The DHS spokesperson added: “Illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are not automatically protected from deportations. DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country. 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.”
How Many DACA Recipients Are in the US?
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 the largest share of DACA recipients at 411,380, far exceeding any other country of origin in the dataset, the institute said. After Mexico, the next highest totals were El Salvador (20,110), Guatemala (13,620) and Honduras (12,550). Smaller but still significant populations came from Peru (4,450), Brazil (3,360), Korea (3,680), Ecuador (2,810), the Philippines (2,380), Colombia (2,260) and Argentina (1,650).
The top five states by number of DACA recipients are California (141,470), Texas (84,430), Illinois (26,850), Florida (19,990) and New York (19,580), the Migration Policy Institute reported.
In 2012, the Obama administration launched the DACA program, providing eligible individuals with temporary protection from deportation and work permits.
Five years later, President Donald Trump moved to end DACA, putting the future of about 800,000 recipients at risk. Legal challenges followed, and in 2020, the Supreme Court ruled against the termination, allowing the program to continue.
DACA recipients are often called Dreamers, after the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. That legislation, which offered many of the same protections as DACA, never passed Congress.
Lawmakers and Advocacy Groups Criticize the Ruling
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus launched a scathing attack on the Trump administration’s policies after the new ruling found that DACA status alone was not sufficient to prevent deportation proceedings.
In a joint statement, Democratic Senators Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Alex Padilla of California and Ruben Gallego of Arizona said the administration was “lying to the American people about its treatment of Dreamers.”
“Donald Trump said that Dreamers should ‘feel safe,’ but every action his government takes weakens the DACA program and threatens the safety and livelihoods of the 500,000 DACA recipients who have only ever known this country as home,” the senators wrote.
“Dreamers are our friends and neighbors. They don’t deserve this. We will not stop fighting back against the cruel, anti-immigrant obsession of Trump, Stephen Miller, and their loyalists,” they added.
The immigrant advocate group Home Is Here said in a statement shared with Newsweek: “The threats to DACA are stacking up—one by one—creating a cascading crisis that is putting the entire program, and the futures of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients at risk. The BIA decision was yet another alarming step in this administration’s attempt to dismantle the DACA program, using courts it controls to blatantly target DACA recipients without taking responsibility for ending DACA outright.”
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated in 2018 that DACA recipients and young undocumented immigrants immediately eligible for DACA contributed about $1.7 billion each year in state and local taxes, including personal income, sales and property taxes.
According to the Center for American Progress, DACA recipients collectively earned almost $27.9 billion in 2022 and contributed about $2.1 billion annually to Social Security and Medicare.
Under the Trump administration’s deportation operation, there has been increased detention of DACA recipients by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Earlier this year, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in a letter to senators that between January and November of the previous year, 261 DACA recipients were arrested and 86 were removed from the country.
Read the full article here
