Juan Rodríguez remembers the year in high school when all of his friends got their driver’s licenses. Some of them even got their first cars.
Hoping to get his license too, Rodríguez asked his mother about the process. And for the first time in his life, his mother told him that he wasn’t a U.S. citizen.
He had been brought to the U.S. at 18 months old. Growing up in Beaumont, Texas, he learned English and remembers watching 9/11 on the television his teacher had wheeled into their classroom. It was the moment Rodríguez decided he wanted to become a journalist.
But as an undocumented university student, it would’ve been difficult to chase that dream. So in 2011, Rodríguez and other students at Lamar University organized to pressure Congress to pass the DREAM Act, which would’ve given children who had immigrated to the U.S. a pathway to permanent residency. He and his fellow students – along with other students across the nation – began a weeklong hunger strike.
“We wanted to show the human aspect of this. We were students, we were community members, we went to the same churches, we went to the same schools,” Rodríguez remembered. “The hunger strike was an emotional thing, and honestly, it’s one of my proudest moments.”
The act failed in Congress, but in June 2012, President Barack Obama signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy as an executive order. Young people who had arrived in the U.S. as children could apply to live and work legally in the only country many of them had ever called home.
Rodríguez and the other students leaped to apply as soon as they could, and then organized a town hall to help about 500 more people apply for DACA, he said. “I still think about what some of those people are doing now. I wonder if they’ve become attorneys, if they’re public servants like myself, or if they’re out working in healthcare,” Rodríguez said thoughtfully.
With work authorization through DACA, Rodríguez would cover Hurricane Harvey for his local news station in Beaumont, and later reported locally for KVUE. Today, Rodríguez works at the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission in Austin, and last month, he was named Employee of the Year.
But Rodríguez told us that his work permit expires in December, and even though he submitted his DACA renewal application back in April, he can only hope it’ll be approved by then. Moreover, Texas could decide to end DACA at any time.
As we spoke over the phone, Rodríguez checked his DACA application, as he does every day. “I constantly check it, either early in the morning when I first wake up, or late at night before I go to bed,” he said, pulling up his file.
As of June 24, it was still in review. DACA renewals are currently facing delays of several months, when Rodríguez told us their approval used to take only a month or two.
“Just having it in the back of your mind is very, very stressful,” Rodríguez said. “It makes me sad to the point where my mental health is just deteriorating with every single day that I check, and it’s not getting approved.”
Caught in Limbo
It’s been 14 years since Obama created the DACA program. Today, many of those initial “Dreamers” have grown from children and students into successful adults and professionals, who have built careers and families in Texas.
Nearly all (99%) DACA recipients graduated from high school and 89% of the initial 2012 DACA recipients are active in the workforce in 2026. About 50% have had children in this country.
Nonetheless, in January 2025, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Obama had created DACA unlawfully, after Texas argued to the court that DACA recipients cost the state “healthcare and public education expenditures.”
The 2025 decision allows current DACA recipients to continue to renew their DACA and work authorization. But as Rodríguez has experienced, those renewals face unprecedented delays within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and DACA recipients are at risk of losing their jobs and livelihoods when their work permits expire.
“It does seem like a lot of people who worked at USCIS were diverted to start working on enforcement instead of processing applications,” Krystal Gómez, managing attorney for the Texas Immigration Law Council, told the Chronicle. “I don’t know if priorities have changed, or if they are focusing on different kinds of applications, or if it’s an intentional move to try to slowly kill DACA. We can only guess.”
The 5th Circuit also decided that the DACA policy would be bifurcated – separating protection from deportation from the program’s benefits, including work authorization and lawful presence – and restricted any final ruling to Texas only. The deciding court could theoretically rule that Dreamers in Texas keep their protection from deportation but lose their work authorization and lawful presence, Gómez explained.
The court directed Judge Andrew Hanen in the Southern District of Texas to make a final ruling on the existence of DACA in the state. Hanen, who ruled against DACA’s lawfulness in 2021 and 2023, has yet to make the decision.
In September 2025, USCIS released a plan for Judge Hanen to use as guidance in reshaping the DACA program, suggesting that post-July 2021 DACA recipients would be “low” for deportation priority but have no lawful presence or work authorization, while older DACA recipients would have temporarily protected status under a “partial stay.”
When the USCIS plan was released, Gómez assumed Hanen’s decision would quickly follow. But several months passed with no action, leaving immigration lawyers and Dreamers with no idea of what could happen next – only that a final ruling is possible at any time. “The decision could drop tomorrow,” Gómez said.
In the meantime, Dreamers are losing their work permits, their jobs, and their ability to provide for themselves and their families due to the delays. Dreamers are being deported – not only those whose DACA has expired and renewals have been delayed, but even individuals with active DACA status, Gómez said.
“It’s really only [the Trump] administration that’s been trying to figure out if they deport a DACA holder while they still actively have DACA,” Gómez continued. “Do they have the right to detain you on Thursday, rescind DACA on Friday, and deport you on Saturday?”
In February, the Department of Homeland Security admitted to Congress that they had deported more than 80 DACA recipients, Politico reported.
With Hanen’s decision looming, DACA recipients are struggling to plan for the future. “My friends and I have these conversations of, ‘What’s your goal for the next two years? Five years?’” Rodríguez said. “And at the end of the day, I can’t really set a goal, because we don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
Gómez feels conflicted – the decision’s delay is causing harm and anxiety, but so could the decision itself. In a best-case scenario, Gómez said, DACA recipients could be allowed to renew. In the worst case, work authorization and lawful presence in Texas could end immediately.
“It’s really hard to live with uncertainty. But what if that certainty comes down, and it means that you have to uproot your whole life and move to a different state?” Gómez asked. “It’s hard to know what to wish for.”
“DACA Was Never Enough”
On June 17, U.S. Rep. Greg Casar hosted a roundtable discussion with DACA recipients in Austin. Several attendees pressed that DACA was never enough.
“It never has been,” one recipient said. “Constantly having to prove ourselves over two years, constantly upholding the ‘perfect citizen’ image, is not something that’s sustainable.”
Rodríguez had described to us the process of getting his DACA renewed every two years, which includes an in-person background check and biometrics screening. “It feels like you’re getting processed into jail,” he said.
After stepping away from teaching, one recipient said he’s applying to jobs, but his DACA expires in July. Even though he filed for renewal in March, it had not yet been approved on June 17. “It is really frustrating. … What’s the point of applying for jobs if I get an opportunity, and they’re like, ‘Your work permit expires in a few weeks?’” he asked.
What is needed, every recipient told Casar, is for Congress to create a pathway to U.S. citizenship for Dreamers and immigrant families who have built lives in this country. Rodríguez gave his Employee of the Year award to Casar as a reminder of that ask.
“All we’re asking for is a pathway to citizenship,” Rodríguez said. “This is our home. This is all we know.”
Editor’s note: We originally defined the bifurcated DACA policy as a legal separation of work authorization and lawful presence. It is actually between protection from deportation and those benefits. The Chronicle regrets the error.
This article appears in July 3 • 2026.
