The clock is winding down for thousands of immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
The Trump administration has stopped accepting new applications for the program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that protects nearly 700,000 so-called Dreamers from deportation. Thursday is the deadline for thousands of current DACA recipients to renew their status for what could be the last time.
That's touched off a scramble across the country. The Department of Homeland Security says more than 100,000 DACA recipients have applied to renew their temporary two-year work permits ahead of the deadline.
Many have gotten help from pop-up legal clinics across the country, including a series of recent events hosted by the City University of New York. In a classroom in midtown Manhattan, lawyers from CUNY's Citizenship Now! project and volunteers from the local legal community helped DACA recipients fill out their renewal applications. After they finished the applications, representatives from a local nonprofit called the New Economy Project were waiting to cut checks covering the $495 application fee.
That was a big relief for Achraf Jellal, who first signed up for DACA in 2013.