Limits of Executive Power: DACA and the Instability of Immigration Relief

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has provided temporary relief to hundreds of thousands of undocumented individuals brought to the United States as children. However, a decade of litigation, rescission attempts, and shifting executive priorities has exposed a fundamental structural problem that immigration policy created through executive action alone cannot provide durable legal protection. This paper argues that DACA, as an exercise of executive authority independent from congressional authorization, is constitutionally unjustifiable under the framework established in Youngstown Sheet &amp; Tube Co. v. Sawyer, and that its continued instability will persist until Congress acts. <br><br>This paper examines DACA through key executive actions and litigation, including its creation through Department of Homeland Security memorandum, subsequent rescission efforts, and a series of judicial decisions that have shaped its current form. It demonstrates that courts have addressed challenges to DACA on procedural grounds but consistently avoid answering the program’s underlying issue about constitutional validity. As a result, DACA remains neither legislatively authorized nor definitively upheld by courts, existing within a legally contested space.&nbsp;<br><br>Furthermore, the paper examines the real-world consequences of this instability, focusing on the reliance interests of recipients whose education, employment, and long-term planning depend on the program’s continued existence. Specifically, its impact on graduate and postgraduate students, whose professional pathways require sustained legal and economic stability. Using Texas as a case study to demonstrate how, in the absence of federal certainty, state regulatory frameworks can create indirect but significant structural pressures on DACA recipients that may effectively compel relocation.<br><br>Ultimately, this paper contends that executive action cannot serve as a durable substitute for legislative reform. Absent congressional intervention, DACA will remain a temporary and constitutionally unjustifiable solution, leaving its recipients in a persistent state of legal and economic uncertainty.