‘Dreamers deserve certainty, dignity’: Arizona leaders mark DACA anniversary pushing for permanent protections

It’s been 14 years since the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program first opened the door for the children of immigrants in the United States to live in the country on temporary status, yet the fight to secure protection at the legislative level remains a rocky path for Dreamers as recipients face losing work authorization, delayed and denied renewals and, now, the very real threat of detention and deportation. 

In Arizona alone, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested over 260 Dreamers and deported almost 174 since 2025, according to numbers reported by Reps. Yassamin Ansari (D-3) and Representative Greg Stanton (D-4) at Monday’s DACA briefing, marking the anniversary of the life-changing program’s founding. 

Nationally, immigration authorities are detaining people who have some form of legal protection, such as Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or DACA, and systematically stripping them of their status and placing them into deportation proceedings. As of December 2025, Arizona was home to 18,450 active DACA recipients, per U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data, with nearly 500,000 active recipients nationwide. 

Ansari and Stanton brought in speakers directly impacted by the lack of safeguards in place for DACA recipients and touched on what they hope can be a solution — their co-sponsored American Dream and Promise Act (H.R. 1589) — introduced in the House in February 2025 — that would grant permanent protections along the pathway to direct citizenship for the almost 900,000 qualifying children of immigrants who have known no other home than the one they migrated to at a young age.

“DACA recipients in Arizona and across the country are facing unacceptable delays and we know this is not accidental. It’s part of the Trump regime’s broader agenda to terrorize communities with ICE, to go after immigrants, to really go after even all forms of legal immigration, quite frankly. And we have to continue to fight back,” Ansari stated during the hearing. “People are at risk of losing their ability to work, support their families and continue building the lives they’ve created here.”

Since the creation of DACA in 2012 during the Obama administration, only a fraction of qualifying individuals who arrived in the U.S. as children and meet specific guidelines have been able to request deferred action for a two-year period, with renewals available in order to request work authorization in the country and temporary legal status.

However, according to caseworkers from Ansari’s office dedicated to helping constituents that are DACA recipients, wait times for renewals have soared over 400% since the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began implementing his immigration agenda. The DHS has detained over 60,000 migrants — according to the most recent data from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) — and deported an estimated 450,000 to 600,000 immigrants since January 2025, according to updated reporting from USAHousing Information and a White House press release from December 2025. 

“The level of anxiety and stress that the DACA community is going through: the constant fear of family separation or of your DACA not coming to place and losing your job. Having those conversations with employers that is really needed to kind of help develop some coping skills to be able to understand, focus on things that you can control, decreasing anxiety and stress and increase resilience… The reason that parents migrated and brought their children with them was to provide a better life,” José Patiño, Aliento’s vice president of Education and External Affairs, said in an interview with CALÓ News. 

Aliento — a Phoenix non-profit that serves students, Dreamers and immigrant families in Arizona to help support migrants and their children who strive for a better future through scholarships, fellowships, apprenticeship programs and mental health support — was also present at Monday’s DACA briefing, speaking on behalf of the Dreamers they’ve helped pursue higher education.

“There’s still the piece of getting a permanent solution, whether it be the Dream Act legislation or be another type of legislation that becomes some permanency in the country, those are the pieces that we’re focusing on. And I think it’s just very important because of the [Trump] administration,” Patiño said of the recent attacks against DACA recipients and migrant families across the country. “Not only with diversities, but immigrants as a whole; whether it be refugees, whether it be mixed-status families, whether it be those who naturalize and adjust to the status already. It seems like everybody is in the eye of the storm.” 

Birthright citizenship has also been targeted following Trump’s 2025 Executive Order 14160 — which prompted an astounding multi-state lawsuit — that would repeal birthright citizenship nationwide, putting many children of migrants at risk of having their status revoked.

Trump’s limits on who is deemed an American citizen would affect as many as 255,000 babies born in the U.S. each year, according to the Migration Policy Institute, as well as the millions of parents who would have to effectively prove the citizenship of their newborn children. Many migrants, their children and mixed-status families now await the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision that would alter American citizenship. 

“An attack on birthright citizenship is an attack on a fundamental American principle… We are a nation governed by the Constitution, and not by political whims. And, as we know, we took that birthright citizenship case all the way to the Supreme Court. We are awaiting a decision on it right now. I believe that we are gonna win that case, but we need to win that case,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said during a separate DACA press conference held on Monday. “Dreamers deserve certainty, dignity and the opportunity to build their future without fear. And I want every Dreamer in Arizona to know that you have an Attorney General in me who will fight for your rights, fight for your families and fight to ensure the Constitution protects everyone that it was designed to protect.” 

Amid the attacks and pending nationwide case, Arizona leaders and organizations continue their advocacy for the thousands of Dreamers who call this state and this country their home, though not without the frustrations that come with a multi-decade fight for protections. 

“I think it’s great that the individual representatives are taking time out of their busy schedules to hold a hearing on this important issue and everything that’s going on and bringing awareness to it, but it’s surprising that they have to do this because the DACA program was announced 14 years ago. If you re-listen to President [Barack] Obama’s speech at the Rose Garden, the intention of this program was to last maybe two, three years at most. It was supposed to be a band-aid, and with that design, it intentionally left out a lot of individuals,” Patiño said. “We’re having another year, another celebration of something that we really shouldn’t celebrate because it just reflects the incompetence of Congress and the lack of willingness to act or have any meaningful push by any administration… It’s just very discouraging and frustrating that this issue is still alive. We should have solved it, at least for this population, a long, long time ago.”

Analisa Valdez (she/her) is a freelance journalist based in Phoenix. Her reporting includes community & culture, social justice, arts, business, and politics.