The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program offers immigrants over the age of 16 temporary authorization to live and work in the United States if they came to the country before the age of 16 and before June 15, 2007. The government has approved more than 835,000 immigrants for DACA since it was created in 2012, but many DACA participants have left the program. In 2022, fewer than 600,000 immigrants were active in DACA.

Since September 2017, the government has released data showing the number of currently “active” participants in the DACA program. At that time, nearly 110,000 immigrants had already left the program, leaving a currently active population of about 690,000. But by June 2022, that number had declined by nearly 100,000 to about 594,000, even as the total number of approvals increased by about 36,000. Overall, nearly 241,000 immigrants approved for DACA at one time are no longer active in the program.

Altogether, 29 percent of DACA recipients had left the program between 2012 and June 2022. This includes 27 percent of the Mexican DACA recipients and 36 percent of the non-Mexican recipients (Figure 2). This means that Mexicans are less likely to leave DACA, while also being more likely to apply for DACA than non-Mexicans who were eligible, according to estimates by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). Conversely, non-Mexicans are less likely to apply for DACA and more likely to leave it.

Giving Up DACA

Some DACA participants may have left the country. Facing stagnation in Congress, it would not be surprising to see some people giving up on their dream of becoming U.S. citizens. Another possibility is that some DACA participants failed to renew their status as required every two years because they could not afford the $495 filing fee. Many DACA-eligible immigrants cite cost as their primary difficulty in applying. MPI has found that income was a strong predictor of who applied for DACA initially.

Involuntary Departures

About 25,000 DACA participants (10.4 percent of the departures) have had their DACA renewals denied. Some of those people might have reapplied with corrected information and were later approved. USCIS also revokes DACA authorization for criminal violations but as of 2019, only 15,903 DACA participants were arrested for any crime of any kind, including minor offenses that would not jeopardize their place in DACA. Denials and revocations are not the main way that DACA participants leave the program.

Replacing DACA

Another way to leave the DACA program is through adjustment of status to legal permanent residence, which would grant them a green card. Adjustment of status is possible usually through close family connections or employer sponsorship for certain immigrants, but the employer sponsored path appears quite rare.

Under the law, people who entered illegally cannot typically apply to adjust status. However, two types of DACA participants would be generally eligible: those who originally entered the country legally and overstayed their visas and those who obtained travel authorization—known as “advance parole”—through the DACA program, left, and re-entered legally. As of 2017, 45,447 DACA participants had been granted travel authorization—roughly 9,000 per year. DACA travel was suspended from then until 2021, but has since resumed.

No one apparently has obtained statistics on the number of DACA participants adjusting status to legal permanent residence. According to the Congressional Research Service, about 5,000 of the 22,340 DACA participants who obtained travel authorization as of December 2015 had applied for green cards (about 3,000 had already been approved at that point).

This 2015 count excludes anyone adjusting who had originally entered legally, and by 2017, DACA travel authorizations had doubled. Moreover, most DACA recipients adjusting based on family connections would be marrying U.S. citizens, and most DACA participants are now of the age where they are likely to be getting married. Although it is not possible to say for sure, it is quite likely that many DACA participants have left DACA by adjusting to permanent residence.

Fewer New Entrants

Another important reason for the declining population is that fewer new entrants have been able to join it and replace those who are leaving. Thanks to the Trump administration’s attempted rescission and later court orders, almost no new applicants have been permitted. Many immigrants were unable to apply initially because they were too young (under age 16). Only those who are over the age of 16 when they applied can be approved. Others failed to apply because the costs were too high at the time or because they never learned of the program.

Conclusion

The size of the future DACA population is important for policymakers and researchers to understand because it affects the likely costs and benefits of providing permanent legal status to this group. The Congressional Budget Office, for instance, has a static fiscal costs model that estimates that the costs will outweigh the benefits. This estimate—which conflicts with other research—is the only estimate that matters for purposes of the congressional budget, and if the population is smaller, it may actually make it easier for members of Congress to find a deal to preserve the program or provide a permanent replacement.