Global Courant
The uncertainty surrounding the fate of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, has created “a perfect breeding ground” for misinformation to flourish online, proponents say.
More than 580,000 DACA receivers have lived with uncertainty surrounding the Obama-era program amid a six-year legal battle from the Trump administration and nine Republican-led states.
DACA, which will mark his 11th birthday has allowed eligible young immigrants who have no legal status after being brought to the US as children to work and study without fear of deportation.
Not only has the legal back and forth created an unpredictable situation for DACA recipients, it has also become “a perfect breeding ground for bad actors to spread this misinformation,” said José Muñoz, a DACA recipient and deputy communications director at United We Dream, the nation’s largest immigrant-led youth organization.
Whenever news about DACA comes out, it’s followed by “big spikes” of online chatter that often become vehicles of “damaging stories,” Muñoz said. Some of these stories may lead people to “erroneously assume they can’t renew their DACA.” , or that DACA has been terminated for any reason.
While a federal judge blocked availability of DACA for new applicants, current recipients or those whose DACA status expired less than a year ago can keep updating it every two years.
Those who miss the window to renew will have to reapply as new applicants, which is currently not allowed. This can jeopardize their ability to continue studying, working and building up savings and benefits.
Misinformation about DACA is often spread online by “well-meaning people” such as relatives and acquaintances who either speculate about the legal challenges or “unknowingly share things that are not true” on WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and private DACA-related Facebook groups, three advocates working to counter misinformation about the program told NBC News.
An overwhelming majority of DACA recipients trying to navigate this confusing landscape were born in Mexico and other Latin American countries. The average DACA recipient is 26 to 28 years old, according to Gaby Pacheco, the director of advocacy, development and communications at TheDream.Us, an organization that helps those brought to the U.S. as undocumented children, commonly referred to as “Dreamers” after the never-passed DREAM Act, earn a college degree.
While social media platforms have made information more available to people, they have also amplified the viral nature of false information and unexamined sources. This has created a space for misinformation to spread widely online, particularly in group chats and other social media platforms commonly used in Latino communities.
Disinformation, scams lead to ‘heartbreaking’ situations
There are also instances of “targeted disinformation” coming from scammers or others trying to take advantage of the uncertainty for monetary gain, lawyers said.
Among the groups most vulnerable to misinformation leading to scams are the approximately 93,000 first-time DACA applicants who have been in limbo since 2021, when the program was closed to new registrants until the lawsuit filed by the Republican-led states found its way through the courts.
It has been more than two years since those new applicants submitted the necessary paperwork and the requires a $495 fee apply to the program. But their applications will not be processed until the ruling that DACA closed for new registrants is reversed.
Astrid Silva, a DACA recipient and an immigration activist who co-founded the nonprofit Dream big Nevadawhich supports undocumented youth in Nevada said it has received calls from many of these applicants and their relatives who have seen Facebook posts falsely claiming that the processing of initial applications can be speeded up by paying an additional fee.
Silva advised them to US citizenship and immigration services website to view the status of their applications.
“If they check, I’m the bearer of bad news, because they hoped the $300 they paid would expedite their case and it wouldn’t be frozen again,” Silva said. “For me, that’s heartbreaking.”
Silva has also seen a lot of misinformation on TikTok, with people falsely claiming that DACA had reopened to new applicants.
“DACA has already been opened 30 times according to TikTok,” said Silva.
Muñoz said United We Dream has been monitoring this and other types of DACA misinformation online since the program first began nearly 11 years ago.
At the time, individuals committed notary, or notary fraudwas a major source of misinformation, Muñoz recalled.
These individuals would pretend to have legal credentials that they did not. They created scams targeting young immigrants and their families, including charging fees for DACA applications without verifying eligibility and providing false information about recent changes and legal challenges to the program.
Currently, most of the misinformation focuses on the court’s legal challenges, Muñoz said.
“The misinformation, a lot of it starts in the confusion,” he said, citing the most recent DACA court hearing as an example. “What does the hearing entail? What will happen? When will there be a verdict?”
On June 1, attorneys representing DACA recipients and the Republican-led states suing to end DACA returned to court to debate a recent Biden administration rule that put the program in a federal regulations to increase its chances of surviving legal challenges. The Texas federal judge who heard the arguments is expected to make a decision this year on the legality of the Biden rule.
Some of the students Pacheco is helping saw posts on Instagram falsely claiming that DACA would end immediately after the June 1 hearing in Texas. Mixed information about the actual date of the court hearing also surfaced. The students came to Pacheco for guidance.
“I saw one of the students shaking and scared,” Pacheco said. “They’re tired of having to live not just in increments of two years at a time where they have to fill out and renew their DACA, but also hearings.”
Best antidote is ‘good information’
Muñoz expects the “next peak” of disinformation to come when the Texas federal judge issues its ruling based on the arguments discussed at the June 1 hearing.
Attorneys from the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, representing DACA recipients in the case, have said there will most likely be an appeal against the judge’s decision, whatever it is.
An appeal means that the case will continue to play in the court system for a longer period of time. The case could eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court for a third time.
Muñoz said United We Dream is ready to monitor online disinformation on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. The exercise helps the organization to determine the best way to counter the disinformation factual information.
“The best antidote to misinformation is good information,” Muñoz said. “The sooner you can get the right information, in a way that people can understand and share, the better equipped you’ll be to counter some of the disinformation.”
Congress “really needs to find a permanent solution” to the immigration status of DACA recipients, said Pacheco, a former DACA recipient.
Having a more permanent solution to DACA, she said, would help reduce misinformation associated with the court hearings because of the uncertainty surrounding them.
