Barack Obama

Aug. 2 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said Sunday night that negotiations with Iran toward ending the war will resume Monday, about a month after formal talks between the two unraveled and preceded a return to open conflict.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Washington after spending a weekend at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club, Trump said talks with Iran will begin Monday afternoon, claiming, as he has repeatedly throughout the war, that Iran wants “to make a deal.”

“We’ll see if it’s true,” he said. “I’d love to do that. Save a lot of lives. Save a lot of unnecessary power, to be honest with you.”

Trump had called off what he advertised as a massive attack on Iran over the weekend, stating it was at the request of allies and Tehran, which he said had agreed to “the parameters of a deal.”

Aboard his plane, he identified Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar as the nations that had asked him to hold off.

“It would have been a massive attack. We were all set to go. But when the allies ask to call it off, you go to sort of say, ‘well, let’s see,'” he said. “And the reason they asked they think there’s a deal.”

Trump has long sought a deal with Iran to constrain its nuclear program, going back to his first administration when in 2018 he unilaterally pulled the United States from an Obama-era multinational accord in order to fashion a new one, and imposed sanctions on Tehran to force it to the negotiating table.

In late February, the United States and Israel attacked Iran with the aims of destroying its remaining nuclear capabilities and inciting regime change, instead igniting the five-month-long war, during which Tehran has laid military claims to the vital Strait of Hormuz.

An April cease-fire created conditions for a memorandum of understanding to be signed in mid-June that was to lay the foundation for ending the war. Amid negotiations on implementing the MOU, disagreements arose over its stance on the vital energy route, which led to a resumption in fighting last month.

Monday’s negotiations would be the first publicly acknowledged since early last month. Trump said the discussions will concern the Strait of Hormuz and led into nuclear talks.

He said that the three allies believe “a deal is imminent.”

Trump called off the attack after speaking with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman over the phone. Trump said Sunday that bin Salman warned him that the consequences of the attack would be unpredictable.

“I mean, will they be flooded with people pouring into their country,” he said. “A lot of bad things can happen.”

Trump said it would have been “the biggest attack since World War II” and “disastrous” for Iran.

The United States is seeking to restore freedom of navigation through the strait, while Iran is trying to maintain some form of control over commercial vessels that pass through it.

According to the nonpartisan, Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, Iranian negotiators may be willing to make what it called “limited compromises” with the United States over Tehran’s control of the strait, though what those concessions may be were not entirely clear.

July 24 (UPI) — A federal court has allowed Tennessee to use a new congressional map that eliminates the state’s only majority-Black district in November’s midterm elections, rejecting a challenge from civil and voting rights advocates.

The three-judge panel on Thursday denied a motion filed by Black Memphis voters for a preliminary injunction against implementing the map, ruling they lacked evidence of racial motivation for the map’s unorthodox mid-decade redistricting, which could be explained by a political motivation.

“The road to a reliably 9-0 map runs through Memphis. Thus, political motivations readily explain the map’s dilutive effects,” the panel, which consisted of two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee, wrote in its decision.

With the ruling, Tennessee may use the map in next month’s primaries.

November’s midterms have been of increasing concern for President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly voiced worries about impeachment proceedings and investigations if Republicans lose the House to Democrats, and has pushed GOP-led states to redraw their congressional maps to create additional Republican-favored districts.

Texas was the first last summer to agree to Trump’s request, sparking a gerrymandering arms race, with at least 10 states have redrawn their maps. All but Democrat-led California and North Carolina, which has a Democratic governor, are Republican-led.

Tennessee’s GOP-majority legislature passed its redistricting map to eliminate the one Democrat-held seat in May, a week after the Supreme Court issued a controversial decision that weakened a key part of the Voting Rights Act, by greatly limiting the use of race in drawing electoral districts.

The three Black Memphis voters, along with the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, the Memphis A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Equity Alliance sued days later, alleging that the new map unlawfully discriminates against Black Memphis voters by dismantling a district where they had long been able to meaningfully participate in the political process.

In its ruling Thursday, the court said that the plaintiffs had to show that the map redraw was racially motivated, which they failed to do.

“The map’s effects — breaking Black Memphians into three separate congressional districts — are readily explainable by political motivations,” the court said.

“It’s no secret (supported by Plaintiffs’ own statements) that city voters prefer Democratic candidates and that rural voters prefer Republican candidates. So, it makes sense that Tennessee’s legislature would split Memphis into thirds when attempting to create a map that favors Republican candidates. And it’s no surprise that the resulting map would also split the Black population of Memphis into thirds.”

Amber Sherman, a plaintiff in the case, said the court’s decision further disenfranchises Black voters in Memphis.

“It’s painful to know we’ll head into another election under a map that was designed to weaken the Black voters in Memphis,” she said in a statement.

“We deserve the same opportunity to shape our future as anyone else.”

July 14 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has signed a pair of executive orders shrinking two southern Utah national monuments by more than a million acres each, sparking anger from environmentalists who say the moves will open the formerly protected lands to exploration.

The executive orders reduce the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument from 1.87 million acres to about 181,500 acres and the Bears Ears National Monument from 1.36 million acres to 121,100 acres. Both are located in redrock country.

Trump signed the orders on Monday in the Oval Office while surrounded by Utah’s Republican leadership, including Gov. Spencer Cox, Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis and several GOP House representatives.

“This is a big day for Utah,” Cox said.

The executive orders mark the latest development in the nearly decade-long tug-of-war over the size of the monuments, though Republicans have opposed Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and its 1.7-million-acre boundary since President Bill Clinton designated it in 1996. The Bears Ears National Monument was designated by President Barack Obama in late 2016.

During his first term, Trump shrunk both monuments — Bears Ears by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by almost half — only for President Joe Biden to restore both of them to their previous boundaries in 2021.

Republicans, including Cox, argue that the monuments violate the Antiquities Act, which limits the designation to the smallest parcel of land necessary for the proper care and management of the objects to be protected. In a White House fact sheet on the executive orders, the Trump administration argues that the term “objects of historic or scientific interest” has been stretched to include landscapes and biodiversity.

“Now, we care. We definitely care about protecting these antiquities and will continue to do so. The problem is with these giant monument designations, there are resources that come with those,” Cox said at the White House press conference.

“We’re grateful that the president has made a determination that we need to rightsize these monuments.”

He added that this will not remove protections already in place, but will make “the monuments more manageable so that we have the resources necessary to continue to protect these antiquities.”

Trump criticized the size of the monuments, saying the designations prevented the public from using the land.

“You can’t go hunting. You can’t go fishing. You can’t do anything. You can virtually not even walk on it,” he said, though the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources states that people can hunt and fish in both monuments.

Environmental groups have been fighting to maintain the size of both monuments since Trump originally shrunk them, pointing to the fact that Grand Staircase-Escalante was designated due to its wide array of scientific and historic resources and Bears Ears was created following a proposal by five Tribal Nations.

Scott Braden, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said Monday’s executive orders make clear that Utah is the “epicenter of Republican efforts to dismantle and obliterate America’s system of public lands.”

“These two landscapes deserve to be protected for current and future generations of Utahns and Americans, not opened to exploitation,” Braden said in a statement, adding that the group would challenge the executive orders in court.

“We are confident that President Trump’s reckless and unlawful acts will be rejected and the monuments restored.”

According to the Center for Western Priorities, the executive orders may open the land formerly part of the monuments for sale or lease to oil, gas, mining and logging companies within 60 days.

“The people of Utah and the entire country have spoken with one voice: These lands belong to all of us, not Mike Lee, President Trump or the mining companies his kids are in business with,” CWP Executive Director Aaron Weiss said in a statement.

John Brennan, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testifies in 2017 on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Brennan is suing the Trump administration, asking a judge to preserve all records of a Department of Justice investigation against him. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

July 1 (UPI) — John Brennan, former director of the CIA and a longtime foe of the Trump administration, filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking a federal court to preserve all records related to the administration’s investigation of him.

The Justice Department has been eyeing Brennan for months, with lawyers interviewing former intelligence officials and issuing subpoenas as part of a conspiracy investigation, The Washington Post reported.

Justice Department officials have alleged that Brennan and others violated President Donald Trump‘s civil rights in a conspiracy back to the Obama administration that included efforts to prosecute Trump and investigate his ties to Russia, The Post said. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, also referred Brennan to the Justice Department, alleging that he lied during testimony to Congress.

Brennan’s attorneys requested that a judge order the administration to preserve any internal records and communications from the investigation.

The records could be used as part of defense arguments that the investigation and any prosecution are part of Trump’s attempt to vindictively punish Brennan, the attorneys said, citing an administration policy “of using criminal process and prosecution to punish the president’s perceived adversaries,” The Post said.

“Administration officials from the acting attorney general to the FBI director and the counselor overseeing the Brennan investigations have been publicly declaring Director Brennan a criminal, not only before securing a conviction in court but even before a full investigation and indictment,” the lawyers wrote, CNN reported.

“And, certain officials in the Department of Justice are engaging in demonstrably irregular prosecutorial activity in order to gin up a case that will satisfy the president’s direction,” they wrote.

Brennan has also said the court should preserve any records that could be used in any broader “grand conspiracy” investigation by the Justice Department. He has denied any wrongdoing. The lawsuit names Trump, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and prosecutors in Florida overseeing the investigation.

June 23 (UPI) — A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration cannot allow states to bar federal food assistance recipients from using their benefits to buy soft drinks, snacks and candy, finding the Agriculture Department lacked the authority to approves such restrictions.

About 42.1 million low-income individuals across the nation receive federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP, which allows recipients to use the benefits to purchase most foods, excluding alcohol, tobacco and hot prepared foods.

Amid soaring obesity rates across the United States, 22 states received waivers from the Trump administration to exempt certain foods and beverages from the federal definition of food to ban SNAP recipients from using the benefit to purchase these items. Though the waivers vary by state, they all target high-calorie, sugary foods, such as soft drinks, energy drinks, candy and others.

In March, five SNAP recipients in Colorado, Iowa, West Virginia, Tennessee and Nebraska sued the Trump administration over its approval of waivers, saying the restrictions were vague, complicated and counterintuitive, causing significant confusion for both them and retailers, while harming SNAP recipients who rely on sugary beverages to manage chronic health conditions, such as diabetes.

In her ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson found the Agriculture Department’s waivers violated the Administrative Procedure Act, stating the department acted in excess of its authority and without following public input noticed procedures as required by law.

“The secretary purports to waive not just a mere administrative or technical obstacle, but the very definition of ‘food’ as it was laid down by Congress,” the President Barack Obama appointee wrote in her 68-page ruling.

“Neither the USDA nor the states can force this square peg into a round hole to avoid the plain language of the statute and the requirement of 2026(k),” which requires SNAP projects to be consistent with the program’s food-assistance purpose.

The National Center for Law and Economic Justice, which filed the lawsuit, celebrated Monday’s ruling as “a major step in restoring essential food assistance to the millions of families that rely on SNAP nationwide.”

“This decision makes clear that the USDA cannot bypass the legal guardrails that establish how SNAP must operate across the country,” Katie Deabler, senior attorney at the NCLEJ, said in a statement.

“It affirms that families deserve a program that works without confusion.”

June 19 (UPI) — A federal judge on Friday told the U.S. Department of Justice it cannot release a transcript and recording of former President Joe Biden and his biographer’s conversations.

Although U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich had earlier in the day denied Biden’s request for an injunction, she nonetheless told the department to wait three weeks for the release as his lawyers file an appeal, ABC News and CBS News reported.

Redacted versions of a transcript and recording of conversations between Biden and the ghostwriter of his biography, Mark Zwonitzer, were set to be released by the Justice Department on Friday afternoon after Friedrich’s initial ruling.

The recordings had been set for release to the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2024 based on reports of Biden’s handling of sensitive and secret government records during the years between serving as vice president to President Barack Obama and being elected to the White House himself.

“Biden has not identified any public harm that would arise absent an injunction in this case,” Friedrich wrote in her decision.

“The harm to Biden’s diminished privacy interest is outweighed by the public’s interest in the Zwonitzer materials and FOIA’s ‘policy of broad disclosure of Government documents in order to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society,” she wrote.

Biden’s attorney’s argued that the conversations for his book were not intended to have been released and that the public’s only interest is because of the government records case, which investigators referred to in their report.

Biden was not charged or alleged of any wrongdoing after the investigation because while evidence suggested that he “willfully retained and disclosed classified material,” his guilt for having done so could not be fully established for a successful prosecution, investigators said at the time.

1 of 4 | Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama appear on stage as they surprised administration and campaign alumni in Chicago ahead of the dedication ceremony of the Obama Presidential Center, Wednesday. The center opens Thursday and will be open to the public beginning Friday. Pool Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/UPI | License Photo

June 18 (UPI) — The Obama Presidential Center will open Thursday in Chicago with a long list of celebrities attending.

The grand opening will be livestreamed starting at 11 a.m. CDT Thursday on Obama.org and on the Obama Foundation’s social media accounts. The opening is invitation-only, and there are no more tickets for the Midway Plaisance Park watch party in Chicago.

The center will be open to the public beginning Friday, and it’s expected to see up to 1 million visitors per year. Tickets, which are $30, are sold out through October.

The center is a 19-acre space on the south side of Chicago that features a tall building that includes a museum of the Obamas’ lives. It shows what life was like in the Obama White House.

The campus also has a branch of the Chicago Public Library, an NBA regulation-size basketball court and Women’s Garden dedicated to women leaders in Chicago. It also has an auditorium, a media suite that visitors can use, a Wetland Walk, a fruit and vegetable garden and a playground.

But it’s not a presidential library and doesn’t house the Obama presidential documents. Those are in the mostly digital Barack Obama Presidential Library run by the National Archives, though the center does have some artifacts on display that are on loan.

Some of the celebrities planning to perform are Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Hudson, Marc Anthony, The Roots, Common, Eddie Vedder, Bono and The Edge, Tems and Marsai Martin.

Every living president will be there except President Donald Trump.

CEO of the Obama Foundation Valerie Jarrett has said Trump is welcome to visit the museum, and they’d love to give him a tour. She said he simply was not invited to the dedication.

“I can tell you that this is a celebration for those who helped get President Obama where he is. And this is a gift to them,” Jarrett said. “And so the people who will be here are the people who’ve been helpful along the way.”

May 28 (UPI) — The U.S. Treasury announced late Wednesday that it has sanctioned an Iranian entity, newly created to oversee and manage the Strait of Hormuz, as the Trump administration seeks to force Tehran to relinquish control over the vital energy trade route.

The strait has been an issue of contention between the United States and Iran, which are locked in negotiations to end the war.

Iran restricted navigation of the strait after the United States and Israel attacked the country in late February, igniting the war. Washington responded by imposing a military blockade of Iran’s ports, cutting it off from maritime trade.

Since imposing the restrictions, Iran has been adamant about maintaining control of the route, through which about one-fifth of the world’s energy trade flows. The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened that there will be free navigation of the strait again, one way or another.

Earlier this month, Iran launched the Persian Gulf Strait Authority to manage the strait.

The Treasury sanctioned the PGSA on Wednesday, accusing it of being an attempt by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to monetize the international waterway.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the mechanism in a statement as the Iranian military’s “latest attempt to extort global maritime trade.”

Bessent said the Wednesday blacklisting was part of Economic Fury, the Treasury’s rebranding of President Donald Trump‘s maximum pressure campaign of sanctions and other trade measures from his first administration seeking to coerce a new nuclear weapons deal from Iran.

The United States has been tightening its financial vise on Iran since 2018 when Trump first imposed sanctions on Tehran after unilaterally withdrawing the United States from a multinational Obama-era nuclear accord aimed at preventing Iran from securing a nuclear weapon.

Trump reimposed the campaign following his return to the White House in early 2025. It was renamed following the start of the military operation Epic Fury that began Feb. 28.

Treasury officials said Wednesday that through the maximum pressure campaign, the Trump administration has denied Iran access to tens of billions of dollars’ worth of revenue.

The sanctions generally prohibit those named from accessing the U.S. financial system and bar U.S. persons and companies from doing business with them. They also expose foreign financial institutions that knowingly facilitate significant transactions for those sanctioned to potential secondary sanctions.

Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, had over the weekend called on Bessent to sanction the PGSA, stating the United States “must ensure every actor enabling the terrorist Iranian regime is held accountable.”

“I support the use of existing authorities to impose sanctions on the PGSA, its officers and any foreign entity that pays, processes or facilitates tolls to Iran for passage through the Strait of Hormuz,” he said in a statement.

Iran has rejected the notion that it is running a toll. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei has said that Iran charges fees to cover costs associated with navigational services and environmental protection measures.

May 25 (UPI) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio tamped down expectations Monday for progress toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz after signaling a day earlier that he might have “good news” within hours.

Speaking to reporters at India’s Palam Air Base in New Delhi on Monday, the United States’ top diplomat said an agreement was “still a work in progress.”

“We thought we might have some news last night, maybe today,” he said, adding the holdup is that it takes time to hear back from the Iranians.

“I’m very confident — we should all be very confident — that we’re either going to have a good agreement or we’re going to have to deal with it another way. We’d prefer to have a good agreement.”

The United States is seeking to have Iran restore shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz before negotiations enter a subsequent phase focused on Iran’s nuclear program.

Rubio said what is on the table for opening the strait is “pretty solid,” but there is “a very real, significant time limit” to negotiations on the nuclear issue.

“Hopefully, we can pull it off,” he said.

Rubio is in India until Tuesday to discuss energy security, trade and defense cooperation with senior Indian officials. Meanwhile, U.S.-Iran negotiations have been ongoing through Pakistani and Qatari mediators.

After reporters that negotiations were edging toward completion, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson later Monday said that talks were focused on ending the war, with no discussions yet on its nuclear enrichment program, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

The spokesperson also voiced skepticism over U.S. reliability, stating there is no guarantee Washington will hold up its end of the agreement once one is reached.

Speaking alongside Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar at a joint press conference on Sunday, Rubio said that he believed more news about the agreement would come from President Donald Trump.

“But I do think perhaps there is the possibility that over the next few hours the world will get some good news, at least with regards to the straits,” he said.

The on-again, off-again negotiations have been conducted amid a fragile cease-fire called in April in the war that began in late February.

Trump has sought a new agreement to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapon since 2018, when during his first administration he unilaterally withdrew the United States from a landmark Obama-era multinational nuclear accord called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Calling it “defective at its core,” Trump has criticized several aspects of the JCPOA, including its sunset provisions easing restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.

Critics have rebutted his accusations, saying that not all aspects of the JCPOA were to expire and that the expiring provisions afforded time were intended to afford time for further diplomacy.

President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. On Sunday, he urged negotiators on the deal with Iran to take their time and get it right. Photo by Al Drago/UPI | License Photo

May 24 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Sunday urged his negotiators “not to rush into a deal” with Iran because “time is on our side.”

He made the comments in a post on Truth Social that also took aim at the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the so-called Iran nuclear deal created in 2015 and which Trump withdrew from in 2018. In his post, Trump called it “one of the worst deals ever made by our country” and blamed former President Barack Obama and his administration.

“It was a direct path to Iran developing a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump wrote. “Not so with the transaction currently being negotiated with Iran by the Trump Administration – THE EXACT OPPOSITE, in fact!”

Trump said Saturday the deal with Iran had been “largely negotiated” and that final aspects were being worked out. On Sunday, he added that talks were “proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner.

“I have informed by representatives not to rush into a deal in that time is on our side,” he wrote.

“Both sides must take their time and get it right. There can be no mistakes!”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said Sunday that “significant progress” had been made and hinted that Trump may make an announcement on the issue “a little bit later today,” The New York Times reported.

“Suffice it to say some progress has been made, significant progress, although not final progress,” he said during a news conference in New Delhi.

May 16 (UPI) — The Trump administration is considering the creation of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate people allied with President Donald Trump who were investigated during the Biden administration.

The fund would be part of a settlement with Trump that would result in him dropping his lawsuit with the Internal Revenue Service over the leaking of his tax returns six years ago, ABC News and The New York Times reported.

The deal emerged after months of negotiations between the White House and Department of Justice, which had originally been aiming to directly pay Trump, but conflict of interest concerns steered toward the compensation fund.

Although Trump has the right to sue as a private citizen, his position as president means that he also can instruct agencies within the executive branch, which would make him both the plaintiff and defendant in a trial.

The concept is partially modeled on an Obama administration compensation fund for Native American farmers and ranchers that distributed $760 million from the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund.

In addition to Trump allies’ legal fees linked to investigations during his first term, the fund also likely would be open to people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol building that saw the building get ransacked by Trump supporters.

Critics of the plan have called it a “slush fund” for Trump and his allies.

“An insane level of corruption — even for Trump,” U.S. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said of the plan earlier this week.

WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) — Every day at 4 a.m., Cesar wakes up to sell burritos on the streets of Los Angeles. He spends a few hours preparing food in his apartment kitchen and later sets up a small canopy tent with a grill, several coolers and a large sign, made by his sister, advertising “burritos for sale.”

He has done this for the last three weeks, after finding out just over a month ago that he was terminated from his human relations job. He lost the job because of renewal delays to his status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill, said Tuesday that 32,000 people have lost their DACA status largely as a result of delays. The Department of Homeland Security has not released data on the number of people waiting for renewals.

More than 500,000 people rely on DACA, according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The program requires recipients to renew their status every two years.

“At first, when I was let go, I was feeling devastated, defeated,” said Cesar, who came to the United States when he was 4 and who did not want his last name used for fear of government retribution. “But, after going through those feelings, I knew I couldn’t just sit there.”

Cesar is one of many DACA recipients who have lost their jobs in recent months due to renewal delays, largely caused by increased vetting procedures. The program requires recipients to renew their status every two years.

The Obama-era immigration program provides work authorization to those who qualify, as well as protection from deportation. When their status expires, DACA recipients lose both protections. Many, like Cesar, now have been terminated from their jobs as a result and fear deportation.

Cesar applied for his renewal in early December, nearly six months ago. Like many others, he has received no communication since from USCIS. Previously, renewal applications took one to two months on average, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Last year, the median processing time was 15 days, according to DHS data.

“In its 14 years, we have certainly seen the DACA program face a whole host of attacks,” said Anabel Mendoza, a spokesperson from United We Dream, a youth-led immigrant network. “But what we’re seeing now is truly the most dangerous moment in DACA’s history.

More than 700 people attended a Zoom event hosted by United We Dream last week to help DACA recipients navigate the instability created by these delays. There was a distinct sense of anxiety among the attendees.

Participants flooded the chat feature of the call with anecdotes of losing solid jobs and questions on whether DACA recipients qualified for paid leave or unemployment.

One attendee wrote that, although he would prefer not to use unemployment, he had been waiting five months to receive his renewal. Like many others, he was worried about his ability to pay off significant bills and loans after losing his job.

One person even questioned whether they could sue the current administration.

Another asked whether they could now be deported, with many worrying whether they may even be detained at their immigration appointments.

The two central benefits of DACA, historically, have been legal protection from deportation and work authorization. However, a recent ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals, an arm of the Department of Justice, said that judges can no longer stop deportation proceedings simply based on the plaintiff having DACA status. This marked a significant shift in immigration policy.

Organizers at the event stressed that DACA still protects recipients from deportation, but judges now have to consider DACA cases more closely. They later acknowledged that many DACA recipients were detained and deported by ICE last year, even before the ruling.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons confirmed in April that 343 people with DACA status were detained between January and November 2025, while 176 were deported.

Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement in February that most of these people had “criminal histories.” However she did not specify their crimes or whether they had been arrested, charged or convicted.

“It is part of a broader pattern of really trying to undermine DACA and erode the very protections that the program was meant to uphold,” Mendoza said.

This was a sentiment echoed by Maria Fernanda Madrigal, a mother of three who recently lost her job as an immigration attorney after losing her work permit because of the delays.

In an interview, she questioned whether the delays were an intentional strategy by the Trump administration. She explained that the renewal process had previously been very straightforward for many of her clients — sometimes taking just a week.

“I’m still trying to figure out what the goal is,” Madrigal said. “Because it’s hard, do they want us to leave?”

She highlighted Trump’s attempted termination of the DACA program in 2017 during his first term. The Supreme Court blocked him and preserved the program in 2020.

Now, she wonders whether it may be easier for her and her family to leave the United States. She explained that, unlike their parents, “a lot of us [DACA recipients] have degrees and careers, so we know that we’ll be able to build lives somewhere else.”

Madrigal now keeps the doors of her house locked at all times out of fear of being detained while she awaits her renewal. She said she and her husband have had discussions about whether their small children should share a bed with them.

“If I’m ever detained, these are the moments that I’m going to want, right? I’m going to look back and say I wish I would have cuddled with them a little longer,” Madrigal said.

As Cesar’s new business continues to grow, he faces similar fears, worrying whether he might be “taken away at any moment.”

“I know a lot of people say we’re resilient and we’ll figure it out. And that’s very true,” Madrigal said. “But, I think the main thing that our people understand is, even though we might be able to stick together and get over this, we shouldn’t have to.”