FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 25, 2024

CONTACT
Email: [email protected]
Juan Gastelum, 213-375-3149
Emily Morris, 213-457-7458

2023 DACA Survey Shows Economic Progress, Continued Uncertainty as Litigation Drags On

WASHINGTON — Since 2012, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has served as a beacon of hope for more than 835,000 undocumented immigrants who call the United States their home. A new survey by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego; United We Dream; the National Immigration Law Center; and the Center for American Progress captures how DACA has allowed recipients to get better jobs, earn more, and seek greater educational opportunities. The survey also catalogs how recipients are contributing to the U.S. economy.

Some key survey findings include:

• 94.1 percent of respondents are currently employed.
• Since receiving DACA, recipients’ average hourly wage has more than doubled from $11.92 to $31.52 per hour, an increase of 164.4 percent.
• 30.7 percent of respondents purchased their first homes in 2023, a percentage that has trended upward over the past decade of surveying DACA recipients.
• 67.1 percent of survey respondents reported buying their first car after receiving DACA.
• 32.9 percent of respondents are parents, with 70.7 percent of parents reporting that they think about “being separated from [their] children because of deportation” at least once per day.
• Without DACA, 40.9 percent of DACA recipients would be less likely to report a crime they witnessed.

“We’ve been surveying DACA recipients for nearly a decade. This year’s survey stands out because it shows that DACA recipients are more integrated in the American economy than they have ever been,” said Tom K. Wong, associate professor of political science and founding director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego, and a senior fellow at CAP. “DACA recipients are earning more than they ever have, which has enlarged their economic footprint. Recent studies have shown that the economic contributions of immigrants have been crucial to the country’s post-pandemic bounceback and in fighting inflation, and this year’s survey shows that DACA recipients are at the forefront of this.”

“DACA recipients contribute so much to our families, workplaces, and communities,” said Diana Pliego, federal advocacy strategist at the National Immigration Law Center. “I’ve lived in the United States since the age of 3. My life is deeply connected to the United States and the community around me, just like those who were born here and just as other immigrants who have similarly lived here for decades. Our home is here, and we will continue advocating for DACA recipients like me to have the stability of a pathway to citizenship.”

“DACA has never been just about a program; as the results of this survey show, DACA has always been about the immigrant young people, friends, family members, and neighbors who are essential to our lives and the well-being, growth, and betterment of our communities,” said Karen Fierro Ruiz, federal policy and advocacy manager of United We Dream. “Every single one of us would feel the impact if DACA were to end. The continued uncertainty about the future of the program is a constant reminder that we must build toward permanent stability and a pathway to citizenship, while also ensuring DACA is sustained and expanded in the interim to include those who have been cruelly locked out.”

“In the nearly 12 years since its creation, DACA has been a catalyst for positive change in the lives of recipients, like my own, helping us reach educational milestones, contribute more to the economy, and achieve financial stability as well as improve our families’ overall well-being,” said Rosa Barrientos-Ferrer, senior policy analyst at CAP. “These opportunities made possible by DACA have subsequently enriched communities across the United States through the contributions of its recipients. However, without a clear path to citizenship enacted by Congress, DACA recipients will continue to live in a state of limbo, uncertain about our futures and unable to fully contribute and thrive in the country we call home.”

Read the column: “2023 Survey of DACA Recipients Highlights Economic Advancement, Continued Uncertainty Amid Legal Limbo” by Tom K. Wong, Ignacia Rodriguez Kmec, Diana Pliego, Karen Fierro Ruiz, Silva Mathema, Trinh Q. Truong, and Rosa Barrientos-Ferrer.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 12, 2024

CONTACT
Emily Morris, National Immigration Law Center, [email protected], 213-457-7458
Julie Gallego, MALDEF, [email protected], (714) 932-2025

Immigrant Texans and Border Organization Sue to Block Extremist Anti-Immigrant State Law

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas residents and a local nonprofit organization are challenging the state’s new anti-immigrant law, known as S.B. 4, in federal court as unconstitutional. 

MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of border-based nonprofit community organization La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), its members and four individual Texas residents. 

The lawsuit argues that Texas is violating the U.S. Constitution by stepping into the federal role to regulate immigration, and that S.B. 4 also violates the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. 

The new lawsuit is being filed as the Supreme Court prepares to issue a decision as to whether to allow a lower court’s injunction of the law to stay in place. 

“S.B. 4 is the most extreme anti-immigrant state law in the last 50 years, bar none,” said Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF President and General Counsel. “Not only does the law seek to establish the state’s own deportation and removal apparatus using untrained police officers and judges, in doing so, S.B. 4 seeks to impose the wholly outdated criminal punishment of banishment; however, as much as its leaders may wish otherwise, Texas remains one state of 50 in a modern United States, so S.B. 4 must fall.”

S.B. 4 includes criminal penalties for entering Texas from a foreign country other than at a lawful port of entry. The law also makes it a crime to be present in the state of Texas after previously being removed or ordered removed from the United States. S.B. 4 also requires Texas courts to order the deportation of immigrants convicted under the law and makes it a crime for a person to refuse to leave the U.S. after a Texas court orders that person’s deportation. 

Attorneys argue that the law will impede the ability of immigrant service organizations such as LUPE to fulfill their missions and will put pressure on the group’s resources.

“As a membership-based organization, our ability to adequately serve our low-income and immigrant members is our number one priority,” said Tania Chavez Camacho, Executive Director of LUPE, an advocacy organization that provides legal services and humanitarian support to individuals in their immigration cases. “S.B. 4 will place unjust stress on our members because of where they were born, even if they are actively going through a legal process to adjust their immigration status and have the legal right to live in the U.S. This law promotes racial profiling and blanket permission for law enforcement to criminalize our community. Just like we’ve done for decades, LUPE will continue to advocate for the rights of all our members and our right for our staff to provide critical services to the more than 8,000 people we serve every year.”

“S.B. 4 is another unconstitutional attack by Texas on the civil rights of Latinos and all immigrants,” said Fátima Lucía Menéndez, MALDEF Southwest Regional Counsel. “MALDEF is proud to represent LUPE in the challenge against S.B. 4 and will continue to fight against misguided laws fueled by xenophobia.”

The lawsuit is the first to challenge S.B. 4 filed by individuals personally affected by the law.

The four individual plaintiffs, as well as some LUPE members, have available pathways or pending immigration applications with the federal government that could lead to permanent lawful status and citizenship. Even so, under Texas’ new law, these individuals are subject to state criminal charges and a state judge’s order that they return to the country from which they entered.

“Whether or not the Supreme Court decides to lift the stay on the injunction, we will stand with Texans and continue to fight this racist, immoral, and illegal law,” said Kica Matos, President of the National Immigration Law Center. “S.B. 4 is a shameless political ploy. It is yet another attempt by Governor Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Texas legislators to take federal immigration law into their own hands for personal political gain, at the expense of Texas families and communities. S.B. 4 will do nothing to solve this nation’s immigration issues but will instead lead to racial profiling of immigrants and U.S.-born residents alike, while wasting billions of Texas taxpayer dollars. For the sake of all Texans, and in support of basic human decency, Abbott and Paxton should abandon their defense of S.B. 4.”

“I am a Texan and the United States is my home,” said Mary Doe, a native of El Salvador who has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years and has permission from the federal government to be here, yet could still be prosecuted and removed under S.B. 4. “My kids, my parents, and my whole life are here. I have permission to work, and I work hard, I pay taxes, and I am proud of my job as a government employee. This is what immigrants do, they work hard and contribute to the country and raise their children to do the same. I am standing up to fight this law because what Texas is doing is wrong. If I were removed from my home and sent away to a country I barely know, it would be devastating not just for me, but for everyone in America who my life is connected to.”

S.B. 4 was scheduled to take effect on March 5, 2024. The Biden administration filed suit to challenge S.B. 4 on January 3, 2024. Two legal services organizations, Las Americas and American Gateways, and the County of El Paso, also filed suit to challenge the law, on December 18, 2023. The cases have been consolidated into U.S. v. Texas.

A federal court in Austin held a preliminary injunction hearing in U.S. v. Texas on February 15, and issued an injunction preventing S.B. 4 from going into effect on February 29. The state of Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit, which administratively stayed the injunction and would allow S.B. 4 to go into effect. That decision is being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.    

Today’s complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division.

The newly-filed lawsuit is also the first to raise claims that S.B. 4 violates the Fourth and the Eighth Amendments. These claims, solely brought by MALDEF on behalf of LUPE and its members, assert that every arrest under the illegitimate power of S.B. 4 is an unconstitutional seizure, and that Texas’ imposition of a criminal penalty of banishment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution.

The complaint is available at: https://www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Complaint_SB4.pdf 

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 7, 2024

CONTACT
Email: [email protected]
Juan Gastelum, 213-375-3149
Emily Morris, 213-457-7458

NILC Statement on 2024 State of the Union

WASHINGTON — Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center and the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund, issued the following statement in response to the 2024 State of the Union:

“Tonight, President Biden missed an opportunity to truly distinguish himself from his predecessor on immigration. Rather than embracing the policies he articulated on his first day in office, the President instead doubled down on the Senate’s failed border bill and parroted dehumanizing Republican rhetoric about immigrants. We urge the President to do better.”

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