Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this week that Congress could consider giving recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program permanent legal status as part of a bipartisan immigration deal — the clearest signal yet of a post-election shift in tone, even as he ruled out what he called amnesty.
Mullin made the comments Monday at a drone-security conference in Maryland, as the Associated Press reported.
Speaking six days after Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress, the secretary said Democrats he had worked with as a lawmaker had reached out, and that President Donald Trump had encouraged him to engage with them.
Mullin said granting DACA recipients permanent status would be “up to Congress.” He gave no timetable, no eligibility rules, and no indication of whether any deal could lead to green cards or citizenship, telling reporters, “We haven’t had any conversation just on policy.”
The opening followed Trump’s Sunday interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes”, in which the president acknowledged that his deportation campaign may have been “too tough” for some voters and pointed to the removal of people who had held steady jobs. The incoming Democratic majorities take control in January. Days earlier, Trump had elevated Stephen Miller, an architect of the administration’s immigration crackdown, to White House chief of staff.
For the roughly 436,350 people who held active DACA protection as of June 30 — down from 533,280 at the end of 2024, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services figures compiled by the National Immigration Forum — the immediate worry is narrower than a permanent-status deal: keeping the protection and work permits they already have.
DACA, created in 2012 for immigrants brought to the country as children, offers temporary protection from deportation and renewable two-year work authorization, but no green card and no direct path to citizenship. More than 125,000 renewal applications were pending at the end of June, and a backlog can leave recipients unable to work if their authorization lapses while they wait.
The National Immigration Forum reported that renewals for DACA recipients from the countries subject to the administration’s travel and visa restrictions — a group that includes Haiti, along with Nigeria and Venezuela — appeared to have been paused, leaving those recipients in limbo. It is a reminder that the DACA debate is not only a Mexican or Central American story; Haitians who arrived in the United States as children are part of it, and have felt the squeeze.
While the Trump administration has signaled a shift in tone on immigration, nothing suggests the president and his team are willing to change their policy. Until the new Congress is sworn in on January 3, 2027, the Republican Party controls both chambers of Congress and the White House.
Last year, Senators Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, introduced the Dream Act of 2025 in December. The bill would let immigrants brought to the country as children earn lawful permanent residence if they meet requirements tied to education, military service, or employment, and it covers a broader set of Dreamers than those who currently hold DACA — but nothing has been done to bring the bill to the floor.
Recent history shows how hard even narrower protections have been to pass. In June, a procedural motion to advance a Durbin amendment — which sought to speed up DACA renewals and limit the use of federal funds to arrest, detain, or deport eligible recipients — failed on a 48-51 vote. The next Congress will have to decide whether to pursue permanent status in a standalone bill or fold it into the broader immigration deal Mullin floated this week.
Democrats have already signaled their intention to pass a bill granting legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants. But they will still need President Trump, who could veto the legislation.
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Sources: The Associated Press, The Latin Times.
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