{"id":393300,"date":"2026-07-31T10:49:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T10:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/393300\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T10:49:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T10:49:14","slug":"texas-daca-recipients-fearful-as-protected-status-expires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/393300\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas DACA recipients fearful as protected status expires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Austin, all the kids in Itzayana Mondrag\u00f3n\u2019s neighborhood looked pretty much like her \u2014 and spoke Spanish too. <\/p>\n

Soon after Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, Mondrag\u00f3n noticed that some of her friends had stopped attending class. She would learn later that those classmates were undocumented and had returned to their home countries \u2014 some out of fear, some against their will, as Trump delivered on his campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration. <\/p>\n

Mondrag\u00f3n\u2019s parents sat her down to explain that they were undocumented \u2014 and so was she. The family had crossed the border from Mexico in 2000 when she was six months old.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know I was what people here call \u2018illegal\u2019 until high school, when the Trump administration came into office,\u201d Mondrag\u00f3n said. \u201cI did grow up with the fear of hearing my parents say, \u2018What\u2019s going to happen if they deport us?\u2019 But it never crossed my mind to think, \u2018You\u2019re illegal.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

As Trump\u2019s first administration ramped up border enforcement and increased deportations, Mondrag\u00f3n, like many migrants who have long lived in the U.S., turned to an immigration program launched under President Barack Obama\u2019s administration. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program offers legal protection and work permits to people who crossed the border as children and grew up without papers.<\/p>\n

Trump tried to dismantle the program in his first term, but in 2020 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against him, arguing that the president\u2019s attempt to shut down DACA was \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d and violated federal law. About 500,000 people in the U.S. are DACA recipients, meaning they can live and work here. About 80,000 of those people live in Texas. <\/p>\n

Mondrag\u00f3n had applied in 2016 at her parents\u2019 urging. In the 10 years that she\u2019s had DACA status \u2014 allowing her to live and work in the U.S. \u2014 Mondrag\u00f3n became a nurse, a landowner and a mom. The 26-year-old has worked at a clinic for four years now, and two years ago, she and her husband, who works construction, bought a three-acre farm on the outskirts of Cedar Creek, half an hour from Austin \u2014 some grass, a green barn, a white wooden house. <\/p>\n

As a side hustle, they raise dozens of animals: chickens, turkeys, ducks, sheep, geese. Their kids, 6 and 2 years old, help gather the eggs. <\/p>\n

Now she\u2019s afraid she could lose it all.<\/p>\n

In Trump\u2019s second term, DACA recipients\u2019 renewal appointments are being routinely postponed, which leads to their status expiring, along with their work permits, which translates into people losing their jobs. Mondrag\u00f3n says one friend had to quit her job as a nurse when her DACA expired despite her renewal request. <\/p>\n

Without DACA, they can become targets of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has recently arrested some recipients at the appointments to renew their status<\/a> or at traffic stops, and deported them to countries they no longer know. <\/p>\n

Mondrag\u00f3n was so afraid that she applied for her renewal in June, six months before it would expire. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is entirely possible that the administration is slowing down the renewals to go around the Supreme Court\u2019s decision,\u201d said Whitney Drake, managing attorney and co-legal director of American Gateways, a Texas-based nonprofit that provides legal services to low-income immigrant communities. \u201cThis administration has been very creative in the ways that it is attempting to dismantle the immigration system.\u201d <\/p>\n

Some Texas business owners<\/a> say the administration\u2019s DACA strategy has destabilized the labor force and hurt their business. A group of Republican construction business leaders from South Texas on Wednesday warned their own party<\/a> that deporting workers will cost them votes in the November midterms.<\/p>\n

Zach Kahler, spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency \u201cis safeguarding the American people by more thoroughly screening and vetting all aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three family members deported<\/p>\n

Mondrag\u00f3n says she\u2019s feeling the anxiety of watching people around her being swept up by ICE during Trump\u2019s mass deportation push. She\u2019s terrified, like her parents before her, that law enforcement agents could separate her from her children.<\/p>\n

She said ICE arrested three of her brothers-in-law and deported two of them. They were undocumented. One lived at the farm and was pulled over for a broken light on his car, Mondrag\u00f3n said \u2014 24 hours later he called home to tell them he was already in Mexico. <\/p>\n

She said collecting her brothers-in-law\u2019s belongings and vehicles to put them up for sale has become routine.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s seen ICE roaming Cedar Creek, pulling over her neighbors in the heavily Latino area.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get really bad PTSD and anxiety when I see a construction truck on the side of the road\u201d with nobody in it, she said. \u201cYou can tell what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Mondrag\u00f3n says she feels the anxiety of watching people being swept up by ICE around her Cedar Creek neighborhood. Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

She said she witnessed state troopers drag a mother out of her car in the parking lot of the clinic where she works \u2014 Mondrag\u00f3n couldn\u2019t stop staring from inside the building at the empty child\u2019s seat in the back of the vehicle while they took the woman away. She said some of her co-workers went outside to translate for the woman as the troopers explained she had a warrant for missing an ICE check-in appointment.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I feel like that broke my heart, you know? I wish I could have done more,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like I still haven\u2019t recovered mentally from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she\u2019s seeing a therapist, taking pills, avoiding the news, crying alone, tending the farm and her kids to keep her mind busy. And praying.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want you here, but they want your money\u201d<\/p>\n

At 12, Jes\u00fas \u00c1lvarez floated across the Rio Grande on a tire the coyote had inflated on the Mexican side of the river. He waited with his sister on U.S. soil, while the smuggler crossed back to get his parents. It was 2005. <\/p>\n

Jes\u00fas\u2019 brother had paved the way north. At 15, he left the family home in Iztapalapa, the most populous borough of Mexico City, saying he was chasing the American Dream. After six years of installing carpet, he\u2019d saved enough to afford the fee to smuggle his family into Texas. <\/p>\n

\u00c1lvarez arrived at a school where local kids bullied newcomers with foreign accents. He missed his country, his city, his grandparents. He learned English, but made friends with other children with foreign accents. In the summers, he worked with his dad and brother installing carpet.<\/p>\n

After graduation, in 2012, he joined the carpet business and applied for DACA. He\u2019s been renewing it every two years. It expired in April, even though he\u2019d applied for the renewal appointment four months ahead, like he always does. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve spent my whole life here. Give me a chance to fix my status. I\u2019m here paying taxes, being a good citizen,\u201d he said. \u201cBut they don\u2019t want you here \u2014 they want your money, they want you to work, they want to enslave you.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"Jes\u00fas \u00c1lvarez, 34, with his wife at his parents\u2019 house on July 6, 2026, in Austin. Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

\u00c1lvarez, now 34, moved into his parents\u2019 home along with his wife and two kids last year around the time the mass deportation campaign took hold. They wanted to save money to buy their own place, but he said now they can\u2019t move out \u2014 without DACA they can\u2019t buy or rent a house in his name. \u00c1lvarez also can\u2019t renew his driver\u2019s license or do any kind of legal paperwork.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife here is just work and then home. And now there\u2019s the fear of wondering whether today I\u2019m going to make it back home to my family,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that wears you down \u2014 to go out into the street and see your own people running from the police as if they were animals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese people who say, \u2018They\u2019re stealing our jobs\u2019 \u2014 come, come work and go head-to-head with us,\u201d he added. \u201cWhy are you a criminal for trying to feed your family? Why are you a criminal for wanting to get ahead?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cMy home is in the U.S. now\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Mondrag\u00f3n, Diana Maldonado understood she was undocumented the moment she set foot in the U.S. <\/p>\n

Her parents arrived earlier to establish themselves in Texas; Maldonado followed in 2001, when she was 11, traveling from her native Guanajuato, Mexico, with her uncle. She couldn\u2019t wait to see her mom again. <\/p>\n

The first time they tried to cross the Rio Grande, the Border Patrol found them with their clothes still wet, lying on the river bank, trying to hide under the night and the trees. Agents sent them back to Mexico the next day. On their second attempt, shortly after, they managed to get to Austin. <\/p>\n

Maldonado applied for DACA in 2012, the year it was created, and found work cleaning houses. In 2024, she was able to travel to Mexico after obtaining a permit that allowed her to travel abroad and return without losing her DACA status. <\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I was going to feel happy returning to what I had once called my home \u2014 the place where I was born, where I grew up as a child,\u201d she said. \u201cBut while I was there I realized that my home is in the U.S. now.\u201d <\/p>\n

Now 36, she has a 21-year-old son who\u2019s attending college and a 16-year-old daughter. Maldonado said she applied for her DACA renewal in December because it usually takes three to four months to come through. <\/p>\n

It expired in February as she waited. <\/p>\n

She\u2019s been nervously checking for updates online, but the government website just lists her application as \u201cprocessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time since I\u2019ve had DACA that I\u2019ve felt undocumented,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\"\"Maldonado applied for DACA in 2012, the year it was created, and found work cleaning houses. Now 36, she has a 21-year-old son who\u2019s attending college and a 16-year-old daughter. Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

Six months ago, around the same time her DACA expired, doctors found a tumor in Maldonado\u2019s left ear that touched her brain. She stopped working and has lived off help from some of her cleaning clients. <\/p>\n

She had surgery, lost hearing in the left ear and even though she still has follow-up checkups, the doctors have cleared her to work. <\/p>\n

She\u2019s just waiting for her DACA renewal. <\/p>\n

She needs a paycheck again. Every time she drives, her kids worry a police officer will stop her. Every time she leaves her house \u2014 a cozy mobile home with a porch, flowers and a small patch of grass outside of Austin \u2014 she fears she may not come back. <\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t want to feel far from home again. <\/p>\n

Virgin of Guadalupe\u2019s miracles <\/p>\n

To honor those whom ICE tore from their lives, Mondrag\u00f3n built a little altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe at her farm. Before finishing it, she said she had an emotional breakdown \u2014 nothing was working, ICE was all around and she couldn\u2019t even find a statue of the Virgin. <\/p>\n

\u201cWithin an hour this random guy came honking,\u201d she said. He sold Virgin figures. \u201cI\u2019d never seen him before. He came out of nowhere.\u201d He was Mexican. <\/p>\n

She finished the altar on a Sunday. The next day, her DACA renewal was approved and her parents\u2019 visas, allowing them to live legally in the U.S. for three years and apply for residency, arrived after a two yearlong process. She said it must be the Virgin of Guadalupe, doing her thing.<\/p>\n

But now, like other DACA recipients in Texas, she faces an additional threat: a federal court\u2019s upcoming ruling in a lawsuit <\/a>could ban them from working in the state and force them to move to other states to work legally. <\/p>\n

The legal battle began in 2018, when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton<\/a> joined six other states to sue the Trump administration seeking to end the program, arguing that it was illegal and that providing social services to DACA recipients was financially harming the states.<\/p>\n

If the suit is successful, that would mean Mondrag\u00f3n loses her job, the farm, the life. She\u2019s arranged for her younger brother, a U.S. citizen, to keep the property in that event. Besides that, she doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019d do. Start from scratch in a different state? Try her luck in the country she left as a baby?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not from here or there,\u201d she said. \u201cThe truth is, I\u2019m not wanted here, but I don\u2019t know any life in Mexico.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"Mondrag\u00f3n\u2019s children hold eggs and watch the geese on their family farm in Cedar Creek. She says she hopes to pass her parents\u2019 spirit onto her children. Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tr<\/p>\n

Mondrag\u00f3n inherited her immigrant parents\u2019 hard-working attitude and their fear about the future \u2014 the need to have a plan. <\/p>\n

She dreams about going back to school, becoming Dr. Mondrag\u00f3n, someone able to explain in Spanish what her patients can\u2019t understand in English. <\/p>\n

Instead, she\u2019s been feeding her emergency fund. Even with her DACA renewed, she doesn\u2019t trust the law will protect her. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have to save money for my safety and my children\u2019s safety,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat will happen if I\u2019m deported? What will happen to my house? What will happen to my pets?\u201d <\/p>\n

She hopes to pass her parents\u2019 spirit onto her children \u2014 minus the fear. <\/p>\n

She looked up at her kids jumping on a trampoline with their father on the other side of the farm. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hope this family stays together.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[132,7536,145,1967,1468,2424,27,29,28,14888,6473],"class_list":["post-393300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-austin","tag-barack-obama","tag-donald-trump","tag-ken-paxton","tag-mexico","tag-republicans","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-u-s-supreme-court","tag-well-a-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}