As president-elect Donald Trump vows to carry out “the largest deportation effort in American history,” immigrants are pushing the lame-duck administration of President Joe Biden to quickly approve pending deportation protections.
The calls stem from the anticipated shutdown of a little-known federal program the Biden administration initiated in January 2023 that allows immigrants exploited in the workplace, including those aiding law enforcement probes, to apply for protected status on that basis. Under the program, the Department of Homeland Security can grant discretionary relief from deportation to workers who are victims of or witnesses to labor law violations, from wage theft to discrimination to dangerous jobsite conditions.
That protection, known as deferred action, also allows them to apply for work permits — a path out of the underground economy where danger is commonplace and the threat of deportation keeps workers compliant. While deferred action lasts up to two years, it also allows individuals to apply for Social Security numbers.
Workers whose paperwork is at different phases of the bureaucratic pipeline face what they describe as an existential threat.
As part of their applications, workers must include a letter from an enforcement agency — such as state labor departments or attorneys general — asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to consider granting their request for deferred action.
Miriam Galarza is among those still waiting for her application to be approved, after submitting wage theft complaints to the New York State Department of Labor earlier this year against her former employer, KEP Construction. Thirty years after arriving in this country from her native Ecuador, the deferred action program at last gave her the opportunity to apply to work legally.
On Wednesday, she was one of about two dozen immigrant workers who rallied outside the Brooklyn office of the Department of Labor urging the state agency to accelerate its review of wage theft cases and to support workers’ pending applications for deferred action.
“That’s why I’m here,” said Galarza. “We need this to move quickly, since we don’t know what will happen with this new administration.”
Predicted to End
Immigration experts say it’s a matter of when, not if, the Trump administration ends the program, known as Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement, or DALE.
During his first term, Trump tried and failed to get the Supreme Court to overturn similar deportation protections for people brought to the country illegally as children, and on the campaign trail he vowed to try again if elected. With a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court and Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress next year, plus immigration hawks nominated for key cabinet appointments, conditions will be ripe for him to implement his ambitious deportation agenda.
Where Galarza and the other workers with pending cases fit in remains to be seen.
“This is all going to be dependent on what the Trump administration’s priorities are, and they may have multiple priorities,” said Deborah Lee, attorney-in-charge of the Legal Aid Society’s immigration law unit. “But I would say most immigration practitioners do expect that deferred action is at risk.”
Even people who already have protected status will lose it, along with their work permits, she said.
Workers Justice Project, the Brooklyn-based workers center that organized the rally, said that of its 50 members who have applied for a letter of support from the state Department of Labor for deferred action, only 15 have received approvals so far. The rest are still waiting.
The agency’s understaffed enforcement unit has struggled to pursue wage theft and other cases. A spokesperson for the agency did not respond to a request for comment about the rally.
Among the workers gathered outside of the agency’s Fulton Street office were app-based food delivery workers, construction workers and former employees of a tobacco sweatshop that was exposed by THE CITY in February and is the subject of ongoing investigations from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and state labor department. One of the former tobacco workers, who identified herself only as Wendy, said that while DHS granted her request for deferred action, her work permit application is still pending with the department.
“God willing, my permit will be granted soon, because I want to keep fighting” to recover unpaid wages, said Wendy. “Because what’s coming for us, with the new Trump administration, will not be easy.”
State Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens), who chairs the chamber’s labor committee, called on Gov. Kathy Hochul to push leadership at the federal level to expedite the pending cases before Trump returns to the White House in January.
“The state is very much aware of the situation, but it would be very helpful for Governor Hochul as a descendant of immigrants herself to help us communicate to the federal government the urgency with which we need these statements of interest. We need them now,” said Ramos, who in September announced her campaign for mayor.
“We know that immigration as it is is backed up, but it’s going to get even more defunded come January, and these folks deserve a fighting chance,” she added.
Trump has vowed to spare no expense in his mass deportation efforts, which some experts estimate could cost taxpayers $968 billion over the next decade, and to pressure so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions — New York City among them — to cooperate.
On Tuesday, he announced that he intends to nominate South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for DHS secretary. Noem has backed his tough immigration talk and as governor made the crisis at the border a central talking point, publicly refusing to accept immigrant refugees during a 2021 influx of migrants at the southern border until after they became American citizens.
“South Dakota won’t be taking any illegal immigrants that the Biden Administration wants to relocate,” she wrote on the social media platform then known as Twitter in April 2021. “My message to illegal immigrants…call me when you’re an American.”
