Democrats push Homeland Security Department on DACA recipients

Source: NPR

September 3, 2025 11:30 AM ET


More than three dozen Democratic and independent senators are asking Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to clarify the agency's position on beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Also known as DACA, the program was created in 2012 to protect from deportation children who arrived in the country illegally prior to 2007 and now benefits some half a million people.

The letter, which was shared exclusively with NPR, comes in response to a DHS statement to NPR earlier this summer which said that "illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are not automatically protected from deportations" and that "DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country." DHS assistant press secretary Tricia McLaughlin in the statement then encouraged those here illegally to self-deport.

The senators argue that policy flies in the face of DHS's own guidance, which states that those who have deferred action from immigration enforcement are "not considered to be unlawfully present" in the U.S. The policy also states that anyone "who has received deferred action is authorized by DHS to be in the United States for the duration of the deferred action period."

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/g-s1-86764/daca-democrats-homeland-security