The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced last week that they will allow DACA recipients who missed the October 5 deadline either because of delays with the US Postal Service or the failure of a courier to pick up the applications from a US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) mailbox, to reapply for their extensions. This is crucial for these applicants since the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program will be ending on March 5, 2018, and the deadline to apply for one last two-year extension of DACA protections was October 5, 2017. The government says that approximately 4,000 individuals failed to meet the October 5 deadline to renew their DACA protections, and initially chose to reject many of these applications that were late due to no fault of the sender. USCIS reversed their decision not to accept the late DACA applications after they “identified USPS mail service delays that affected a number of DACA renewal requests” as well as “discovered certain cases in which the DACA requests were received at the designated filing location (e.g., at the applicable P.O. Box) by the filing deadline, but were rejected.”
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