When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Karla Toledo in May without a warrant, they targeted a woman who had lived in Arizona for 30 years. 

She was a toddler when she was brought here by her parents, which later permitted her to gain protection from deportation under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. 

Her case was dismissed — at least temporarily — and she was released, but immigration attorneys and elected officials say it signals a new enforcement reality: people previously shielded by legal protections are no longer safe.

Mo Goldman, Toledo's attorney, said at a press conference following her release that the move signals "the level of cruelty this government will stoop to.”

Goldman describes the broader pattern as "delegalization" through a systematic effort, stripping protections from immigrants who have followed legal pathways.

"It is essentially attrition through enforcement, artificially creating a crisis by foot-dragging on their applications,” he said in an interview with LOOKOUT.

Toledo's arrest as a DACA recipient isn’t the first such case. In April this year, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a precedent-setting decision against Catalina "Xóchitl" Santiago-Santiago, an active DACA recipient that USCIS filed a Notice to Appear — the document that initiates removal proceedings. The appellate judge said terminating a deportation because of DACA status was not reason enough. 

That ruling followed a policy memo from February last year that directed agency employees to no longer exempt any noncitizens — including DACA recipients— from potential removal proceedings, ending the prior practice of shielding people with approved immigration benefits from detention and potential deportation. 

By June 2025, USCIS reported it had initiated removal proceedings against more than 26,700 people under the new policy. This week, U.S. Congressman Joaquin Castro announced in a press release that at least 85 DACA recipients have been deported since Trump took office again. 

USCIS did not respond in time for publication to emailed questions about their expanding enforcement role.

There are more than half a million DACA recipients in the country at latest count, according to recent numbers from the Migration Policy Institute. According to a 2020 report, around 39,000 DACA recipients, or around 11 percent, at the time identified as part of the queer community. 

And out of the more than 1.1 million residents who could qualify for DACA in 2020, an estimated 81,000 are LGBTQ+, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA. The research estimated at least 2,000 of those people lived in Arizona. And there has been considerable concern for a number of those people now at risk of being sent back to countries where they may face persecution for being openly queer, but also a place where they may have no formal ties.  

Toledo — who is not queer — has worked with the Tucson Language Justice Coalition and Scholarships AZ. She said at the press conference after her case dismissal that her immediate plan is to continue that work. “I want to be involved in the community as much as I can,” she said.

But her legal status continues to be in peril. On June 3, immigration officials issued her a new notice to appear in court, restarting the process for removal. Her DACA status, meanwhile, expires in July. She has already applied for renewal — but renewal processing times have stretched dramatically over the past year and a half. 

What once took weeks — sometimes less — now takes an average of more than three months, according to USCIS's own processing-time data. Attorneys and recipients across the country report real-world waits of six months or more.

According to a May 2026 issue brief by the immigration advocacy organization FWD.us, DACA recipients whose status lapses before renewal is processed lose their work authorization and, in many states, their driver's licenses. Time spent in the U.S. after a lapse can also be counted as "unlawful presence," potentially barring future legal pathways.

The office of Rep. Adelita Grijalva is seeing the delays firsthand: "My constituent services team currently has over 100 open cases related to DACA renewals," Grijalva said in a statement to LOOKOUT. "We are seeing significantly longer processing times than in previous years, with some cases pending since last November. This is a clear indication that the Trump administration is deliberately slowing the renewal process."

Goldman, Toledo’s lawyer, said the delays are not accidental: "They are intentionally dragging their feet on DACA renewals, trying to create a class of individuals where they have to work under the table.” 

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LOOKOUTJoseph Darius Jaafari (he/him)