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DOJ seal

An administrative appellate court within the Justice Department said last week that being a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), often known as "Dreamers," is not enough to justify relief from deportation.

According to a decision published April 24 by the Board of Immigration Appeals, a three-judge panel of appellate immigration judges sided with the Department of Homeland Security in a case involving Catalina "Xóchitl" Santiago, a Mexican national who has lived in the U.S. since she was 8 years old.

Court records show Santiago was detained at El Paso International Airport on Aug. 3, 2025, while on her way to a conference in San Marcos, Texas, with her lawyers arguing her detention was "arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to regulation, statute, and the U.S. Constitution."

As noted by El Paso Matters, authorities cited Santiago's criminal history involving trespassing, narcotics and drug paraphernalia. Her attorneys, however, said many of the charges did not result in convictions or were dismissed and had not prevented renewal of her DACA status. She was released last October.

Several months after her release from detention, the Board of Immigration Appeals panel reversed an earlier ruling that had closed her deportation case and returned the matter to immigration court for further proceedings, NPR reported.

A recent NPR investigation found that over the past year, attorneys within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement representing DHS in immigration court have increasingly appealed decisions to the BIA. The analysis found the appellate court sided with government lawyers in 97% of publicly posted cases last year, a 30 percentage-point increase from the average over the past 16 years.

As of March 2026, the NPR investigation found that DHS prevailed in all but one of 21 decisions this year. In that case, the board ruled in favor of an immigrant after the person withdrew an asylum appeal because they had already been granted another form of protection from deportation.

Juliana Macedo do Nascimiento, deputy director of advocacy and campaigns at the pro-immigrant rights organization United We Dream, told NPR the Trump administration is gradually rolling back protections for DACA recipients.

"For over a decade, DACA has endured relentless, politically motivated attacks," Macedo said. "This decision is yet another step in dismantling the program without the government taking responsibility for ending it outright. ... This is a quiet rollback of protections, and our communities are paying the price in real time."

Created in 2012 during the Barack Obama administration, DACA was designed to provide temporary protection from deportation for people brought to the United States as children before 2007. Recent figures suggest about 500,000 people are DACA recipients.

Although DACA is intended to offer temporary protection from deportation, it does not provide a direct path to citizenship or permanent residency, which has made Dreamers a target of immigration enforcement efforts.

According to a letter sent to senators earlier this year by then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, between January and November 2025 a total of 261 recipients were arrested and 86 were deported.

Originally published on Latin Times