“Ni de aquí, ni de allá”: Dreamers reflect on the toll of living in DACA limbo

The Obama administration established the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program through executive action in 2012, following years of failed efforts to pass federal immigration reform. The program offers temporary protection from deportation and renewable two-year work permits to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Since its inception, DACA has provided a pathway for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants, often called Dreamers, to pursue higher education and legal employment opportunities without the fear of deportation.

The program has faced significant political and legal hurdles since it was established. In 2017, the Trump administration attempted to terminate DACA, leading to a series of nationwide lawsuits and injunctions that culminated in a 2020 Supreme Court ruling blocking the administration’s attempt to overturn the program.

Litigation over DACA, however, remains ongoing. In 2021, a federal court ruled against the program, in response to a legal challenge brought by Texas. The ruling prevented the government from processing new DACA applications, while allowing existing recipients to continue to renew their status every two years. In January 2025, a federal court issued a ruling finding that issuing work permits under DACA was unlawful, but applied the ruling only to Texas.

The uncertain future of DACA leaves hundreds of thousands of recipients in legal limbo, including tens of thousands in California. More than 530,000 people are currently enrolled in DACA, according to the most recent data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The largest number of DACA recipients in the country–150,000–reside in California. While USCIS does not provide county-level data, a 2016 analysis by the Migration Policy Institute estimated that around 30,000 residents of the East Bay were eligible for DACA.

At the University of California, Berkeley, the program’s tenuous status has thrust undocumented students into an extended state of ambiguity. In collaboration with UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism, El Tímpano has published first-hand accounts of Dreamers navigating the second Trump administration amid an uncertain future for DACA.

Mi Historia is El Tímpano’s first-person narrative series that amplifies community voices. The three featured stories in this series were produced in the UC Berkeley course “Undocumented America,” and is part of The Stakes, a UC Berkeley Journalism reporting project.