Colorado’s 13,000 DACA recipients can get free legal help to fill out paperwork this weekend — at a time when the program is facing legal challenges.
The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition will host an all-day clinic with two lawyers on Saturday at Eloise May Library in Denver to help DACA recipients with renewal paperwork and citizenship applications.
The coalition’s Legal Services manager, JuanDavid Garza, said attendees should come prepared with documentation from any governmental agency they’ve worked with.
“It looks like there's a lot of questions that are asked of you, biological or biographical,” he said. “[The forms] ask about folks' history with all the systems: criminal justice system, immigration system, the tax return system . . . ”
He said those who plan to attend the session should plan to spend several hours: “They need dates of any trips they took outside of the United States. When they left .... Previous work history and stuff like that .... If folk do gather a lot of this stuff, including documents, ID, green card before Saturday, then it could be like two hours.”
The action is part of a series of steps the coalition has been taking to show support for the DACA program, which earlier this month was the subject of a hearing in the Fifth District Court of Appeals in New Orleans to possibly end the program. The coalition sent a delegation of 16 people who sat in on the hearing.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals began in 2012 during the Obama administration and is intended to allow people born outside the U.S. and arriving as children to have two years’ protection from deportation, a work permit, and a social security number. The protection is renewable.
The Trump administration rescinded the program in 2017. It was reinstated for existing DACA recipients in the summer of 2018, but no new applications were taken. Thereafter, multiple court battles ensued, including a Supreme Court decision that preserved the program. In December, 2020, DACA started accepting initial applications again.
Then, in September 2023, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas issued a ruling declaring DACA illegal. The ruling does not impact DACA recipients’ current protections or their ability to continue to renew them, but it has brought a halt once again to new applications. Advocates and recipients appealed the ruling, and that’s what brought coalition members to New Orleans on October 10.
The outcome of that hearing is pending. Meanwhile, the coalition wants to do what it can to aid those already a part of the program.
In addition to Saturday’s clinic, it will hold another one on November 2 — that one will be at the Justice and Mercy Legal Aid Center in Denver. Even though drop-ins are welcome at either clinic, the coalition asks prospective attendees to fill out this document ahead of time, if possible.
“If they think they're eligible or know they're eligible,” Garza said of the clinic, “they're welcome to come.”
