About 506,000 people held active Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status as of September 30, 2025, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.1U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Immigration and Citizenship Data That is down from a peak of roughly 800,000 in 2018, and the active population has been shrinking every quarter because a federal court injunction blocks USCIS from approving any new initial applications.
How the Active Count Has Changed
USCIS publishes quarterly snapshots of the active DACA population. Six months before the September 2025 figure, the March 2025 count was about 525,000. The direction has been consistently downward since 2018.
Over the program’s lifetime, roughly 822,000 people have been approved for DACA at least once.2Congressional Research Service. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) – By the Numbers The gap between that cumulative total and today’s active count reflects recipients who moved on to permanent legal status through marriage or employer sponsorship, people who let their status lapse, and those whose DACA was terminated. The average active recipient is now about 31 years old, meaning most were young children or teenagers when they first arrived.
Where DACA Recipients Are From
Mexico dominates the DACA population. As of March 2025, roughly 426,600 active recipients were born in Mexico, about 81 percent of the total.1U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Immigration and Citizenship Data That’s nearly 21 times the next-largest group. The four countries with the most recipients after Mexico are:
- El Salvador: approximately 20,700
- Guatemala: approximately 14,100
- Honduras: approximately 12,900
- South Korea: approximately 4,600
Recipients come from more than 150 countries in total, with Peru, Brazil, the Philippines, India, and Jamaica all represented. Applicants report their country of citizenship on Form I-821D, which is how USCIS tracks these breakdowns.3U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Form I-821D – Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
Where DACA Recipients Live
Recipients cluster in the same states where immigrant communities have long been concentrated. As of March 2025, the six states with the most active recipients were:1U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Immigration and Citizenship Data
- California: 147,440
- Texas: 87,890
- Illinois: 27,800
- Florida: 20,590
- New York: 20,520
- Arizona: 19,810
California and Texas alone account for nearly half of the national total. Within those states, recipients are heavily concentrated in major metro areas.
Why the Number Keeps Falling
Two forces drive the steady decline. The first is legal. Since 2021, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas has blocked USCIS from approving any new initial DACA applications. In January 2025, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that ruling, though it narrowed the geographic scope of the injunction to Texas alone and maintained a stay allowing current recipients everywhere to renew.4Justia Law. Texas v. United States, No. 23-40653 (5th Cir. 2025) USCIS still accepts initial applications from first-time filers, but those sit in a holding pattern and cannot be approved.
The second force is the program’s frozen eligibility rules. To qualify, a person must have arrived in the United States before their 16th birthday, been under 31 as of June 15, 2012, and lived continuously in the country since at least June 15, 2007.5U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Those cutoffs never move. Someone who arrived as a child in 2010 cannot qualify, no matter how young they were. Even if courts lifted the injunction tomorrow, the pool of eligible people would be limited to those who met a fixed set of conditions more than a decade ago.
Applicants also must have been enrolled in school, graduated from high school, earned a GED, or been honorably discharged from the military at the time of their request.6U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children Convictions for felonies, significant misdemeanors, or three or more other misdemeanors disqualify an applicant. USCIS runs a background check on every request.
What the Numbers Miss
Active DACA status is not the same as legal immigration status. The Department of Homeland Security has publicly stated that DACA does not confer any legal immigration status, and between January and November 2025, ICE arrested 261 DACA recipients and deported 86 of them. DHS reported that 92 percent of those arrested had criminal histories beyond civil immigration violations. Those figures are small against a half-million active recipients, but they mark a shift from earlier enforcement norms that generally treated active DACA holders as low-priority for removal.
DACA is granted in two-year increments, and recipients must file a renewal before each period expires.7U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Frequently Asked Questions Anyone who lets their grant lapse for more than a year, or whose DACA was formally terminated, must submit a brand-new initial request, which courts currently block USCIS from approving. That means every recipient counted in the 506,000 has an active interest in filing renewals on time; each missed cycle permanently reduces the total.
Congressional legislation could open the program to new applicants or provide a path to permanent status for current recipients, but no such law has passed. Until it does, or until courts change course, the active count will continue to fall.