The Trump administration admitted this week that it improperly rejected Dreamers’ applications to renew their protections under the Obama-era DACA deportation amnesty, in the latest black eye for the embattled program and the agency that oversees it.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it “discovered certain cases” in which requests for a two-year renewal of DACA protections were received before the Oct. 5 cutoff date set in President Trump’s phaseout, but which were rejected anyway.
The agency didn’t say what went wrong, nor did it say how many cases were involved. It did say those it rejected will have to resubmit their applications.
USCIS is the agency within Homeland Security that would be tasked with approving any new amnesty enacted by Congress for illegal immigrants, and the bungling of the DACA renewal process suggests it may struggle to deal with a broader legalization program.
The agency, in an announcement late Wednesday, also said it will relent and accept DACA applications that were sent in plenty of time but got lost in the mail and ended up arriving after the Oct. 5 deadline.
That is a reversal from last week, when USCIS insisted it was sticking by the Oct. 5 deadline.
USCIS blamed the U.S. Postal Service for “mail service delays that affected a number of DACA renewal requests.”
The reversal came after immigrant rights advocates pointed to cases where applications had been mailed three weeks before the deadline but were rejected because they didn’t arrive at USCIS’ intake until after Oct. 5.
It’s not yet clear how many applications could be affected, though Homeland Security officials said last month that about 5,000 applications had come in late.
USCIS said DACA applicants must show proof that they mailed the applications “in a timely manner to be received by the Oct. 5 deadline” and that the cause of the delay was “mail service error.”
Immigrant rights activists had demanded USCIS use postmarks instead of arrival dates to determine applications’ validity. The agency’s new position amounts to a middle-ground approach, but it still won praise from activists.
“USCIS did the right thing by reversing course and allowing DACA applicants who filed on time to reapply,” said Steven Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition.
He said USCIS should also accept any applications that were rejected because of minor errors made by applicants.
Tens of thousands of illegal immigrant Dreamers rushed to get in applications for renewal between Sept. 5 and Oct. 5 after President Trump announced a six-month phaseout of the DACA program, the legally suspect 2012 temporary amnesty that protected as many as 800,000 illegal immigrants from deportation and granted them a foothold in society.
Under the phaseout, those whose applications were to expire before March 5 could apply for a renewed two-year permit — as long as their application was received by USCIS by Oct. 5.
That set off a scramble to reapply and to get the $495 filing fee.
Of the 155,000 people who were eligible to apply in the six-month window, about 133,000 did file applications on time.
Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration group, said the latest problems should spur Congress to move faster to protect Dreamers.
“The government’s dysfunction on display during the reapplication snafu and the government’s continued cruelty in targeting young immigrants underscore why action is needed now on Capitol Hill,” he said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.