With the door to apply for DACA open for the first time in more than three years, hundreds of high school and college students in California are rushing to apply, fearful it will be slammed shut again.
“We’re on a mad dash to put out as much educational content for folks as possible,” said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, the state and local policy manager for United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country. “We know that this window is open, but we don’t know for how long.”
A federal judge ordered the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services on Dec. 4 to fully restore Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that provides temporary protection from deportation and permission to work for about 700,000 young people who came to the U.S. as children.