If you came to the United States as a child, grew up here, went to school here, and built a life here — but never had a path to permanent status — you already know what DACA is. You have probably lived through every news cycle about it. You may hold DACA now and wonder whether it will survive the current administration. You may have aged into eligibility years ago but never been able to file an initial application because the program has been frozen to new applicants since 2021. Either way, this guide is written for you: a practical, current assessment of where DACA stands, what your options are, and where the real strategic value lies — particularly in advance parole, which remains DACA’s most powerful long-term benefit.
Where DACA Stands Legally
DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — was created by executive action in June 2012. It was never a statute. It was never passed by Congress. That foundational vulnerability has driven every legal challenge since, and it explains why the program exists in a permanent state of litigation.
The current legal landscape is shaped by one case: Texas v. United States, which has wound through the federal courts since 2018. Here is where things stand as of early 2026.
The Fifth Circuit’s January 2025 Decision
In January 2025, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conclusion that the Biden administration’s 2022 DACA final rule violated the Administrative Procedure Act. But the court narrowed the lower court’s injunction in two critical ways. First, it limited the geographic scope to Texas only — the other plaintiff states did not establish standing. Second, it limited the substantive scope to the work authorization component — not the deferred action itself.
The practical effect: DACA remains fully operational nationwide for current recipients. The court explicitly acknowledged the “immense reliance interests” that DACA has created for hundreds of thousands of people who have built lives around the program’s protections. That language matters — it signals that even a skeptical court recognizes the human stakes of unwinding the program.
New Applications: Frozen Since 2021
If you have never held DACA before, you cannot currently obtain it. Judge Hanen’s July 2021 order froze the processing of all initial DACA applications, and that freeze remains in effect. USCIS will accept your initial application and your filing fee, but it will not adjudicate it. Your application sits in a queue that is not moving.
This is not a Trump administration policy — it predates it. But neither has the current administration taken any action to restart initial processing. For practical purposes, if you are a first-time applicant, DACA is not available to you right now.
Renewals: Still Operating
If you currently hold DACA, you can renew. Renewals are being processed nationwide, including in Texas. The two-year grant cycle continues. This is the single most important takeaway for current DACA holders: your status can be maintained, and you should maintain it. Do not let it lapse.
The Current Enforcement Environment
The enforcement landscape for DACA holders has shifted meaningfully under the current administration. DHS has publicly stated that DACA does not confer legal status and that recipients are not automatically protected from removal. Immigration enforcement officers have arrested and detained DACA holders. What happens if a DACA holder is detained — including whether a bond hearing is even available — depends on how ICE classifies the detention, a question our 2026 detention and bond guide walks through. DHS officials have urged DACA recipients to self-deport.
These statements and actions represent a departure from prior enforcement postures. Under both the Obama and Biden administrations, DACA holders were generally treated as low enforcement priorities. That is no longer the case. The current administration’s enforcement priorities are broad — essentially encompassing any person present without lawful status — and DACA holders fall within that scope.
What does this mean practically? It means DACA holders should be more careful, not less, about maintaining their status. A lapsed DACA grant removes even the thin protection that deferred action provides. It means keeping your record clean — any criminal contact, even a minor arrest, can trigger enforcement attention. And it means understanding that DACA is a shield, not a sword: it defers removal action, but it does not prevent it.
Loss of Healthcare Benefits
One concrete change: DACA recipients lost access to Affordable Care Act marketplace coverage effective August 2025. The Biden administration had extended marketplace eligibility to DACA holders starting November 2024, but the Trump administration reversed that policy. DACA holders remain ineligible for Medicaid and CHIP, as has always been the case.
This matters because healthcare access was one of the few new benefits DACA holders had gained in years. Its removal underscores a pattern: the current administration is narrowing DACA’s practical value through administrative action rather than attempting to terminate the program outright through the courts or executive order.
Renewing Your DACA
If you hold DACA, renewing is straightforward — but timing matters.
When to File
USCIS recommends filing your renewal 120 to 150 days before your current DACA period expires. Filing earlier than 150 days will not speed up processing and may actually delay it. The sweet spot is roughly four to five months before expiration.
Do not wait until the last month. Current processing times for renewals range from three to seven months, with significant variation. Some applicants — particularly nationals of countries listed in recent Presidential Proclamations — have experienced extended processing holds. If your renewal is pending when your current period expires, you may experience a gap in work authorization. That gap can cost you your job, even if the renewal is eventually approved.
How to File
File Form I-821D (Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) along with Form I-765 (Application for Employment Authorization) and the I-765 Worksheet.
Filing fees as of 2026: Online filing is $555 total. Paper filing by mail is $605 total. USCIS no longer accepts personal checks, business checks, or money orders for most filers — you will need to pay by credit or debit card (Form G-1450) or direct bank transfer (Form G-1650). There is no fee waiver available for DACA renewals.
File online if you can. It is cheaper, faster to receipt, and gives you an online account to track your case. After filing, you will receive a receipt notice (Form I-797C) within two to four weeks, followed by a biometrics appointment four to six weeks later. The final decision follows, typically within three to seven months total.
If Your DACA Has Already Lapsed
If you let your DACA expire, you can still file a renewal — USCIS treats these as renewal requests rather than initial applications, provided you held DACA previously. But the gap creates real problems. You lose work authorization during the gap. You lose deferred action protection during the gap. And in the current enforcement environment, that gap carries more risk than it did under prior administrations. The message is simple: do not let it lapse.
Advance Parole: DACA’s Most Valuable Benefit
For many DACA holders, the most strategically significant benefit of the program is not the work permit — it is advance parole. This is a benefit that most DACA holders either do not know about or underestimate, and it deserves serious attention.
What Advance Parole Does
Advance parole authorizes you to travel outside the United States and return. For most DACA holders, who entered without inspection or overstayed a visa, this is the only lawful way to leave the country and come back. But the real value is not the trip itself — it is what happens when you return.
When you re-enter the United States on advance parole, you are paroled into the country. That parole is a lawful entry — not an admission — and a lawful entry on parole is what can open adjustment of status — the process of applying for a green card from inside the United States. But see the update below — in August 2026 the law governing this strategy changed significantly.
The Law Has Changed: Arrabally Overruled (August 2026)
The legal foundation for this strategy was Matter of Arrabally and Yerrabelly, 25 I&N Dec. 771 (BIA 2012), in which the Board of Immigration Appeals held that departing the United States on advance parole did not trigger the three-year or ten-year unlawful presence bars under INA section 212(a)(9)(B).
On August 13, 2026, the Board overruled that decision. In Matter of Delcarmen-Lara, 29 I&N Dec. 830 (BIA 2026), the Board held that a departure under a grant of advance parole is a “departure” that triggers those bars — but it applied the new rule prospectively only. The Board expressly declined to treat the respondent’s own pre-decision trip as a disqualifying departure; trips completed before August 13, 2026 are judged under the old rule, and travel on or after that date falls under the new one.
What this means now: if you have accrued more than 180 days of unlawful presence, leaving the United States on advance parole exposes you to the three-year or ten-year bar. Re-entering on parole is still a lawful entry that can open adjustment of status, but that no longer helps if the departure itself made you inadmissible — an adjustment of status application filed after the trip can be denied unless you qualify for an extreme-hardship waiver under INA 212(a)(9)(B)(v). Not every DACA holder is affected: time spent in the United States before age 18 and time protected by DACA does not count as unlawful presence, so someone who received DACA before accruing 180 days of unlawful presence may still be able to travel without triggering the bars. Whether Delcarmen-Lara will be challenged in the federal courts remains to be seen; as of this update it is binding in immigration proceedings nationwide.
For the decision itself, the $1,020 parole fee, and who is genuinely at risk, see our analysis of the Delcarmen-Lara decision and the new fees.
The Three Categories of DACA Advance Parole
USCIS grants advance parole to DACA recipients for three purposes:
Humanitarian purposes. This is the category I use most frequently. The typical case involves a DACA holder who needs to visit an elderly grandparent — usually in Mexico — whose health is in severe decline. These applications require substantial documentation: you need to prove the family relationship through the entire family tree (birth certificates, marriage certificates, sometimes baptismal records), and you need medical evidence establishing the grandparent’s declining health. These cases take effort to build, but in my experience, most are approved when properly documented.
Educational purposes. Study abroad programs, academic research, or educational conferences. You need documentation from the educational institution explaining why the travel is necessary.
Employment purposes. Business meetings, overseas assignments, conferences, or client meetings. You need documentation from the employer.
Of these three, humanitarian cases are the most common in my practice, and they produce the clearest path to the real strategic objective: a lawful parole entry on return, which can open adjustment of status.
Processing Times and Fees
Advance parole applications are filed on Form I-131. Current processing times run six to twenty-one months, with most cases completing within fourteen to fifteen months. This is long, and it creates practical problems — particularly for time-sensitive humanitarian travel.
I have had cases where the processing time defeated the purpose entirely. One client needed to travel for the traditional Day of the Dead ceremony in Mexico — a genuine, culturally significant humanitarian purpose. We filed roughly eight months in advance. USCIS issued a Request for Evidence after the Day of the Dead had already passed. The approval eventually came through, but the parole validity period was not usable for the intended purpose. The client understandably gave up.
This is a real limitation. Advance parole works well for situations where the timeline is flexible — an elderly grandparent whose health is declining over months or years, an educational program with enrollment cycles. It works poorly for date-specific events when processing times exceed six months.
Fees: The I-131 filing fee is $580 online or $630 by mail. On top of that, DHS charges a parole fee — $1,020 in 2026 — collected by CBP at the port of entry when you return on advance parole. Budget for approximately $1,600 to $1,650 in government fees alone, plus attorney fees.
Premium processing is not available for I-131 advance parole applications. USCIS field offices can grant emergency advance parole for genuine emergencies — medical crises, imminent death of a family member — but this requires an in-person appointment and is discretionary.
A Word of Caution About Advance Parole Travel
Advance parole authorizes you to travel and return. It does not guarantee you will be admitted. At the port of entry, CBP officers make the final determination about whether to parole you back into the United States. If there are issues in your record — criminal history, prior immigration violations, discrepancies in your application — the officer can deny entry.
Additionally, the current enforcement environment adds a layer of risk that did not exist under prior administrations. While advance parole is a lawful benefit that USCIS has approved, the political posture toward DACA holders has hardened. After Delcarmen-Lara, I no longer recommend advance parole travel for any DACA holder who has accrued more than 180 days of unlawful presence. For clients who clearly have not — because they received DACA before the unlawful presence clock ran — travel may still be possible, but the analysis now has to be done case by case, before any trip is booked. Get specific advice about your own entry date, your age at entry, and your DACA history before you travel.
What DACA Does Not Do
It is important to be clear about what DACA cannot accomplish, because I regularly meet people who believe it does more than it does.
DACA does not provide lawful immigration status. You remain without status. USCIS has been explicit about this, and the courts have agreed. DACA defers removal action — it does not authorize your presence in a legal sense.
DACA does not provide a path to a green card on its own. There is no provision in the INA that converts DACA into permanent residence. The advance parole strategy described above creates a pathway, but DACA itself does not.
DACA does not protect you from removal. It defers removal at the government’s discretion. That discretion can be exercised differently by different administrations — and the current administration has made clear that it views DACA holders as within the scope of enforcement.
DACA does not extend to family members. Your DACA grant covers you alone. Your parents, siblings, and children do not receive any benefit from your DACA status.
Looking Forward: The Uncertain Future of DACA
No one can honestly tell you what happens next with DACA. The program has survived multiple legal challenges, two administrations that tried to end it, and a decade of Congressional inaction on comprehensive immigration reform. It continues to exist because courts have recognized the reliance interests of the people who built lives around it — but that judicial patience is not unlimited.
What I tell my DACA clients is this: use the benefits you have while you have them. Renew on time. Explore advance parole if you have a qualifying purpose — particularly if you have or expect to have a U.S. citizen spouse, because a lawful entry on parole at return can be transformative. Do not assume DACA will exist in its current form indefinitely, and do not wait for Congress to act. Congress has had fourteen years to legislate a permanent solution for childhood arrivals. The DREAM Act has been introduced and has failed to pass repeatedly. Relying on Congressional action is not a strategy.
The strategic imperative is to convert DACA’s temporary protection into something more permanent wherever possible. For some holders, that means advance parole followed by adjustment of status through a family relationship. For others, it may mean exploring whether other immigration categories apply — employer sponsorship, extraordinary ability, or other visa classifications that do not depend on DACA at all. The analysis is individual, and it depends on your specific circumstances, your family situation, your education, and your employment. Some DACA holders may also qualify for asylum, depending on country conditions and timing.
Working With an Immigration Attorney
DACA renewals are procedurally straightforward, and many holders file them successfully on their own or with help from nonprofit legal services organizations. If your case is a simple renewal with no complications — no criminal history, no gaps in status, no changes in circumstances — self-filing or using a low-cost legal service is reasonable.
Where legal counsel becomes essential is in the strategic work: advance parole applications, adjustment of status planning, evaluating whether you qualify for other immigration benefits, and navigating any complications in your record. A criminal arrest — even one that was dismissed — can create issues. A prior removal order in your record, which some DACA holders have from childhood border crossings, requires careful analysis. And the advance parole process itself, with its documentation requirements and strategic implications, benefits from experienced representation.
The cost of legal representation for immigration work is substantially more than nonprofit or low-cost services. That is reality. But the cost of a poorly prepared advance parole application — one that is denied, or one that is approved too late to use, or one that creates problems at the port of entry — is far higher. For DACA holders who are considering advance parole as a pathway to adjustment of status, this is one of the most consequential immigration decisions you will make. It is worth getting it right.
Contact Our Office
If you hold DACA and want to explore your options — particularly advance parole and the pathway it creates toward permanent residence — we can help. Immigration Law of Montana, P.C. has handled DACA cases since the program’s inception in 2012, including initial applications, renewals, advance parole applications, and the adjustment of status cases that follow successful advance parole travel. We serve clients across Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado.
Contact our office to schedule a consultation. We will assess your specific situation, evaluate whether advance parole makes strategic sense for you, and map out a realistic plan for converting DACA’s temporary protection into something permanent.
