The Trump Administration’s DACA Renewal Deadline Was Moved Forward & Dreamers Weren’t Notified
Today is the deadline for thousands of DREAMers to process their renewals, more than 40,000 may miss it because of bad information.
The news that the Trump administration was ending the DACA program didn’t come as big of a shock to advocates as did the rushed deadline to process renewals — they were given just one month from Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement that the program would be ending. And it turns out the Trump administration didn’t even notify current DACA recipients about that updated deadline — one that came and went in just one month. Thursday was the last day to process a DACA renewal for anyone whose authorization expired on March 5 or sooner, and as many as 42,500 young people across the country may have missed it.
That comes as a big frustration to activists who worked around the clock the last month to process six months of renewal paperwork in just one month. That’s 154,000 young residents who had to jump through complicated hoops of paperwork and find $495 at a moment’s notice to ensure their stay in the only country many have ever known. But for those who didn’t finish their renewal on time, they may not have even known about it.
The program’s demise has been covered immensely in the mainstream and Spanish-language media, but that new deadline would have been a contradiction to paperwork that was given to the DACA recipients by the U.S. Customs and Immigrations Services who have run the program. According to Vox, many people would have received a letter before Sessions’ announcement that told the recipients that they had 180 days to reapply, essentially six months. But the Trump administration ramped up the schedule and did not notify anyone individually.
