Trump Administration More Thoroughly Vetting DACA Applications

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials under President Donald Trump appear to be scrutinizing new applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program more aggressively than his predecessor, according to new statistics.

The data cover decisions made in the DACA program from April to June, when officials approved 5,860 applications from people who had not previously enrolled in the program, and rejected 2,728 applications. That means the number of denials was 46.6 percent of the approval total.

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That is higher than the share of denials to approvals in the previous three-month period and from October to December, Barack Obama’s last months in office. The rate of denials to approvals of new applications was 11.4 percent.

The comparable figures for fiscal years 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013 were 21.6 percent, 21 percent, 15.4 percent and 2.3 percent.

Since applications can take a long time to process and carry over from one-quarter to the next, examining the ratio of approvals to denials offers a more accurate picture of the agency’s approach on DACA. It is impossible to know whether the gap between approvals and denies has gotten smaller because of a change in policy or because more recent applicants simply are less likely to qualify.

[lz_table title=”DACA Rejections Rising” source=”U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services”]Denials as a percentage of approvals*
|Period,Ratio
April-June,46.6%
January-March,17.6%
October-December,11.4%
FY 2016,21.6%
FY 2015,21%
FY 2014,15.4%
FY 2013,2.3%
|
*New applicants
[/lz_table]

But Matt O’Brien, the former chief of the National Security Division within the Fraud Detection National Security Directorate of USCIS, said he believes the DACA program is rampant with fraud and that the Trump administration is clamping down.

“It’s kind of hard to say … What it does seem to indicate is that the Trump administration message is getting through and USCIS is starting to get it,” said O’Brien, who now is director of research at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “It could be the message is finally getting through.”

The new data come as the debate of the future of its beneficiaries kicks into high gear. After Attorney General Jeff Sessions indicated that he believed the Obama administration exceeded its authority in creating it without congressional approval, Trump this month said he would end the program by March.

But the president has indicated that he is open to a legislative solution that would formalize the quasi-amnesty, which under DACA applied to illegal immigrants who had been in the country continuously since June 15, 2007, and were younger than 16 when they came. The status protects them for deportation and allows them to obtain documents to work legally in the United States.

[lz_table title=”Top DACA Countries” source=”U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services”]Birth country of DACA recipients
|Country,Number
Mexico,548K
El Salvador,25.9K
Guatemala,17.7K
Honduras,16.1K
Peru,7.42K
South Korea,7.31K
Brazil,5.78K
Ecuador,5.46K
Colombia,5.02K
Argentina,3.97K
|
Total,689.8K
[/lz_table]

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said it is a “reasonable assumption” that the new administration is taking a harder line. She said that denials could be on the rise because USCIS officials are rejecting applications that the previous administration had held off on making a final determination.

Another possibility, Vaughan said, is that Trump’s election prompted many people with dubious credentials to try to get approved before Obama left office.

“It could be people were making a last-ditch effort to get an application in,” she said.

Trump’s failure to repeal DACA had been a sore spot among immigration hard-liners. Joseph Guzzardi, a spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization, said closer scrutiny would be a welcome development, if true.

“That would be consistent with his campaign promises,” he said.

Guzzardi said he thinks the program exacerbated the surge of unaccompanied youths at the border that began in summer 2014. Many of those minors thought they would qualify for the program, he said, even though they did not.

“That’s completely consistent with what we’ve know for a long time, which is that the word went out … If you could get to the border and get across the border, you’re going to be home free,” he said.

[lz_table title=”DACA Home States” source=”U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services”]Top states of residence
|State,Number
California,197.9K
Texas,113K
Illinois,35.6K
New York,32.6K
Florida,27K
Arizona,25.5K
North Carolina,25.1K
Georgia,21.6K
New Jersey,17.4K
Washington,16.4K
|
Total,689.8K
[/lz_table]

USCIS officials also for the first time released a detailed geographic breakdown of the 689,800 people who currently are enrolled in the program. Mexicans total 548,000, or 79.4 percent of enrollees. El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru round out the top five.

But there are smaller numbers of enrollees from dozens of countries. For instance, there are 80 people born in Antigua-Barbuda, 60 from Iran, 40 from Qatar, 40 from Togo, 20 from Belarus and 10 from Burkina Faso. It includes counties that are not thought of as places where illegal immigrants smuggle in their young children. Some 750 people born in Canada are DACA beneficiaries.

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More than half of them, 379,400, live in just four states — California, Texas, Illinois and New York. California far and away is first on that list, with 28.7 of the total. The Los Angeles metropolitan area alone has 13 percent of DACA enrollees.

“It’s also not surprising that they would gravitate to the most liberal, permissive of the United States, California,” Guzzardi said.

(photo credit, homepage and article images: Molly Adams, Flickr)