ICE Is Detaining DACA Recipients. It’s Growing Harder for Them to Get Out.

Leticia, a 36-year-old woman who has lived in the U.S. since she was 15, thought she and two of her siblings were safe from deportation. They have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals protections, giving them two-year work permits and reprieve from possible deportation.

But in November, immigration agents detained Letitia’s parents and two of her brothers, including one with DACA status. Her parents and one of her brothers chose to leave the country. Orlando, her brother with DACA, is still in detention. He’s waiting for the renewal of his DACA permit, which expires on Friday, according to his legal team.

Leticia hasn’t visited her brother at the detention center where Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held him for nearly five months. She fears she could be detained, too, despite recently renewing her DACA protections until 2028. Instead, they have daily phone calls.

“I’ve been so nervous, to be honest with you, even with my DACA that I have right now that came in the mail a month and a half ago,” said Leticia, who, like Orlando, is being referred to by her middle name out of concern for her safety. “I just feel like I’m not safe like I used to, that at any time they could come and take it away from me, and then I have nowhere else to go.”

After trying unsuccessfully to end DACA in his first term, President Donald Trump has taken steps to erode the program. His administration routinely states that its recipients — immigrants who entered the U.S. when they were under 16 and have lived here since at least 2007 — are subject to detention and deportation.

Hundreds of DACA recipients have been caught up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, including some with no criminal records. NOTUS identified 21 court petitions from January 2025 to March of this year challenging the legality of detaining immigrants with active DACA status or pending renewals.

It’s shattering the trust of people like Leticia, who voluntarily turned over her information to a government that said it would protect her.

“I don’t know what’s like living in hell but that’s what we’ve been like in the past three months,” Leticia said of her life since her parents’ deportation in December.

She said Orlando has considered giving up on his case.

“He says that there are days where the hours feel like days,” Leticia said.

The administration has given conflicting information about how many DACA recipients are being detained. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told House members that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained 270 DACA holders and deported 174 last year. But in February, the agency informed Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin that 261 had been detained and 86 deported last year.

In response to NOTUS’ questions about the number of detained DACA recipients, DHS said that 92% of the DACA recipients ICE arrested last year had criminal records and provided four examples. “Illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are not automatically protected from deportations,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country. Any illegal alien who is a DACA recipient may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons including if they’ve committed a crime.”

DACA recipients can lose their status and be detained or deported, but that has typically happened only after a conviction for a serious crime.

In recent weeks, high-profile cases have highlighted the administration’s pattern of targeting immigrants who have spent most of their lives in the U.S. The federal government was ordered to bring back a DACA recipient it had deported to Mexico. Immigration agents detained a DACA recipient from Colombia while he was bringing milk to his premature baby in the hospital.

Attorneys say DACA recipients have spent months in detention and some of their clients are choosing deportation. Getting any immigrant in ICE detention released has become increasingly difficult. In July, ICE started subjecting all immigrants who entered the U.S. without authorization to mandatory detention without bond hearings.

Some detained DACA recipients are seeking relief in federal courts through habeas corpus petitions rather than in immigration courts, where judges are employed by the Justice Department and can be fired at any time.

“We just need to get before federal judges, because there’s no way we’re going to get anything fair by an immigration judge or by the Board of Immigration Appeals,” said Veronica Cardenas, a New Jersey immigration attorney who handles habeas cases.

In one of habeas cases, Sebastian Flores, a DACA recipient from Peru who has lived in New York since he was 6 years old, regained his freedom after a federal judge in Texas ordered the government to give him a bond hearing or release him from custody, according to court documents.

Flores spent nearly two months at the one of the deadliest detention centers in the country, Camp East Montana in Texas, where he said he stayed in an area with more than 70 bunk beds. Hand soap was scarce and shampoo was a luxury, he said.

“I thought I was going to be deported, even my own family thought I was,” Flores said. “I didn’t think we had a fighting chance.”

Immigration agents detained him in October at the El Paso International Airport after a business trip to train staff at a local 787 Coffee, as he manages several locations of the chain in New York, he said. His DACA permit had lapsed, according to court filings, but he said it was renewed last month.

Flores’ cousins and members of a running club he coached organized a GoFundMe that raised nearly $46,000 to help him get released. Months after his release, Flores said he hasn’t had a chance to process what happened and has been in survival mode, even distancing himself from the running club. He broke down describing how he felt about finding out he was going back to New York.

“At first I felt very happy, and then on the way back, on the plane ride, I felt so guilty like I left people behind,” Flores said. “I’ve met people my little brother’s age, people who are my dad’s age. And to me, my biggest worry was how are they going to survive?”

DACA has allowed Flores to work legally, but the time and money required to maintain it is draining, he said.

“It’s just been the same two years of planning your life out, whether you’re going to be here or not,” he said. “It’s creating a life, but not creating any certainty.”

Long wait times for renewal are adding to the stress for many DACA recipients. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is not processing new applications, but it encourages existing DACA recipients to file for renewals four to five months before their protections expire, according to its website. But some recipients have waited for more than six months to hear back, according to a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin from House Democrats, led by Reps. Chuy García and Lou Correa.

The Democrats asked Mullin to detail the steps USCIS is taking to address the backlog. The DACA renewal processing time is the highest it’s been in recent years. In the 2026 fiscal year so far, the median time for the agency to issue renewals was 2.3 months, an increase from half a month in the previous fiscal year, USCIS data shows. However, completion of 80% of renewals currently takes 3.5 months, according to the agency’s web page for case processing times.

California immigration attorney Jose Jordan said that in his experience, DACA recipients who have any kind of police contact often end up in immigration detention, even if they ultimately don’t face criminal charges or charges are dismissed.

One of Jordan’s clients, Norma Guzman, spent four months at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. Immigration agents detained Guzman on Sept. 25, according to court filings. She was en route to a family court hearing stemming from an arrest during a dispute with her husband earlier that month, she said.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges against Guzman, according to a letter from District Attorney Nathan Hochman that the immigration judge overseeing her case requested, Jordan said. NOTUS reviewed the letter.

“Imagine if she couldn’t afford an attorney, then at that point, how would she have known to request this letter?” Jordan said. “And even if she did request it and they mailed it back, how easy is it to get lost in a detention center?”

Guzman is from Mexico and entered the country in 2006. She gained DACA status at 17. USCIS received her renewal 21 days after her deportation protections expired in July, Jordan said. The attorney said helping his clients get DACA renewed while in detention was a race with USCIS and the immigration court system.

Because of her time in detention, Guzman missed the holidays with her 2-year-old daughter and husband. She described the detention center as depressing, with no doors and no privacy. She said they were given the same meals, usually served cold.

USCIS renewed her DACA permit on Jan. 5 and ICE released her on Jan. 29, Jordan said.

“I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t scream,” Guzman said of the moment she reunited with her family. “I was just admiring my family, the land, the earth, the natural air.”