Monday’s PBS News Hour took sides on DACA, the acronym for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, children brought to America by illegal immigrant parents and allowed to stay (known in sympathetic media circles as "The Dreamers," named after a failed Obama-era bill).
Co-anchor Geoff Bennett's rendition of the DACA mythos was perhaps the most objectionable part of the segment, in front of a cloying graphic of an American flag and the words “Dreams Deferred.”
Geoff Bennett: The American dream is slipping further out of reach for young adults who were brought to this country without authorization as children, known as DACA recipients. That is the conclusion of a new report, which argues the barriers they face are driven not by a lack of ambition or talent, but by policy. Liz Landers speaks with one of the report’s authors.
When was the last time PBS declared any regard for “The American Dream,” as opposed to issuing sour critiques of the direction of the country?
Reporter Liz Landers: This month marks 14 years since the creation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. For more than 500,000 Dreamers, many of them now in their 30s, their future in this country is uncertain. The policy established under the Obama administration offered undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as minors a renewable two-year period of protection from deportation. To qualify, recipients must have been living in the U.S. before June 15, 2007, be in school or have a diploma, and have no criminal record. The Trump administration is chipping away at the policy, leaving the fate of many of its rules and regulations to ongoing court challenges…
PBS anchor Geoff Bennett goes to bad for the so-called Dreamers: "The American dream is slipping further out of reach for young adults who were brought to this country without authorization as children, known as DACA recipients." pic.twitter.com/pIMSInFjNF
— Clay Waters 🇮🇱 (@claywaters44) June 30, 2026
Landers spoke with Gaby Pacheco, chief executive of TheDream.US, which conducted the survey and compiled the report. Policy research by activist groups is PBS's favorite type of policy research.
Pacheco has been a Dreamer activist since at least 2010, when she was cited in a notorious New York Times story as one of a grand total of four protesters marching “to Washington to protest what they called the Obama administration’s lack of action on legislation granting legal status to illegal immigrants.”
Apparently Pacheco hasn’t suffered too much in the interim, having built a career around the issue while she remained in the country.
Landers: Some of these recipients have been deported and detained. Does DACA still offer the protections that it once did?
Pacheco: ….Unfortunately, right now, where we stand on DACA is, we have the Fifth Circuit that said, yes, we believe that people should have protections. Unfortunately, that’s been over a year, so we don’t really know….
PBS has covered the plight of recently deported DACA recipients extensively since Trump’s second-term immigration crackdown, while ignoring the case of DACA recipient Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, originally from Mexico, alleged to have directed a terror attack plot against the White House’s UFC gala.
Also left unquestioned in the segment: The idea behind DACA itself, that those “childhood arrivals,” average age now 32, according to Landers, still have a right to remain in America after all this time.
Landers, who recently married former CNN reporter Jim Acosta, lamented the administration pressure being placed on them to leave.
Landers: The Trump administration has admitted to deporting Dreamers and is openly pushing and advocating for Dreamers to self-deport. How do these slow-walking renewals, the stripping of protections from HHS and other agencies, and barring this professional licensure increase the pressure to do that? Do you see rising pressure on Dreamers to self-deport?
A transcript is available, click “Expand.”
PBS News Hour
6/29/26
7:30:38 p.m. (ET)
GEOFF BENNETT: The American dream is slipping further out of reach for young adults who were brought to this country without authorization as children, known as DACA recipients. That is the conclusion of a new report, which argues the barriers they face are driven not by a lack of ambition or talent, but by policy.
Liz Landers speaks with one of the report’s authors.
LIZ LANDERS: This month marks 14 years since the creation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. For more than 500,000 dreamers, many of them now in their 30s, their future in this country is uncertain.
The policy established under the Obama administration offered undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as minors a renewable two-year period of protection from deportation. To qualify, recipients must have been living in the U.S. before June 15, 2007, be in school or have a diploma, and have no criminal record.
The Trump administration is chipping away at the policy, leaving the fate of many of its rules and regulations to ongoing court challenges. The report, in their own words, examines the postgraduate trajectories of more than 2,500 dreamers with college degrees.
It finds White House policy changes stripping many of some form of legal status or work authorization, leaving one in five of these graduates fully undocumented.
Gaby Pacheco is president and CEO of TheDream.US, the organization that conducted the survey and compiled the report.
Gaby, thank you for joining us.
GABY PACHECO, President and CEO, TheDream.US: Thank you for having me.
LIZ LANDERS: Where does DACA stand now? There are long wait times for the renewal of DACA recipients.
GABY PACHECO: Yes.
LIZ LANDERS: Some of these recipients have been deported and detained. Does DACA still offer the protections that it once did?
GABY PACHECO: I wish I can say yes with certainty.
Unfortunately, right now, where we stand on DACA is, we have the Fifth Circuit that said, yes, we believe that people should have protections. Unfortunately, that’s been over a year, so we don’t really know.
And what we have been seeing from the Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration is that they have been, in essence, dismantling the program little by little by either making the renewals delayed, by ensuring that certain DACA recipients from certain countries cannot get status or get their DACA renewed, and that over 100,000 people that apply for DACA still have their DACA, the initial DACA paused.
LIZ LANDERS: DACA protections include work authorization. Can you lay out some of the differences career-wise between the alumni in your report who are fully undocumented versus those who do have those work permits?
GABY PACHECO: Yes, what we see is that individuals that have work authorization, six months after they’re graduating, they’re finding jobs. And they’re finding full-time jobs. They’re finding jobs in their field. They are fulfilled, and they have been able to actually make more money than their parents combined.
And that, to us, is just exactly what this program is about, creating that generational change and ensuring that young people who are talented and who want to give back can contribute.
On the other hand, the people that do not have work authorization have a lot harder time finding work, and they have lower-paying jobs, they struggle.
LIZ LANDERS: The average age of a DACA recipient now is about 32 years old.
GABY PACHECO: Yes.
LIZ LANDERS: They have dependents, families of their own. Has the policy kept up with the aging of this demographic?
GABY PACHECO: I don’t think so, specifically because the way that we talk about dreamers and DACA recipients tends to be very paternalistic. We talk about it as if they’re young kids.
Realistically, there are some DACA recipients that are into their 40s. We know that over 300,000 U.S. citizen children or more have a parent that has DACA. We know that DACA recipients own homes. We know that DACA recipients have been, some of them, working in the same job for the last 14 years since they got DACA.
And what we see, right, is that the policy and also our country has not realized and our leaders in our country the potential of integrating this community fully into our country.
What we do not -- what we know is that they’re paying billions of dollars in taxes, and, unfortunately, they have to live in two-year increments at a time.
LIZ LANDERS: You were an undocumented student yourself and one of the architects of DACA. Fourteen years in, is the program still serving the purpose it was designed for?
GABY PACHECO: I would dare to say that the DACA program is likely one of the most successful immigration programs we have had in our 250 years of our country.
I own my own home. I have been able to fulfill myself, right? I pay a lot in taxes and contribute. And this is the story of integration. I used to hear this a lot. Why don’t you just make the line? And I’m like, there’s no line. I will make the line if there were.
LIZ LANDERS: The Trump administration has admitted to deporting dreamers and is openly pushing and advocating for dreamers to self-deport. How do these slow-walking renewals, the stripping of protections from HHS and other agencies, and barring this professional licensure increase the pressure to do that?
Do you see rising pressure on dreamers to self-deport?
GABY PACHECO: I think that is the point of what they’re trying to do.
And it’s a bit confusing, because what you hear from the mouth of the president about dreamers is very positive.
DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: Republicans are very open to the dreamers.
KRISTEN WELKER, Moderator, "Meet the Press": You want them to be able to stay? That’s what you’re saying.
DONALD TRUMP: I do. I want to be able to work something out.
GABY PACHECO: He understands the issue. He says he wants to do something. Yet the policy and what we’re seeing coming out from the administration and the Department of Homeland Security is completely contrary to that.
And the solution is right in the hands of everybody, but yet nobody wants to do something about it.
LIZ LANDERS: You have been advocating for these legislative changes. Do you think that Congress is going to do anything?
GABY PACHECO: They have to. And it is up to us to use our voice to push members of Congress to take action and to take action, sooner, rather than later, because, as we see, people are suffering, people are getting deported, people are losing their jobs, and this is not good for our country.
LIZ LANDERS: Gaby Pacheco, thank you so much for coming in.
GABY PACHECO: Thank you for having me.
