Some Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients across Tennessee say they've been turned away from Driver Services Centers since October 1, unable to renew the licenses they've held for years. The reported denials have left families scrambling to figure out how they'll get to work, school, church and daily activities if the problem isn't resolved soon.
According to News Channel 5 Nashville, DACA recipients have been able to obtain Tennessee driver's licenses since the program began in 2012, as long as they qualified and passed an extensive background check. That changed abruptly this month, and the station reports that renewals which once took weeks have recently been stretching into months even before the license denials began. On October 3, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition posted that it had heard about changes and reports of denied renewals. WKRN reported on October 7 that Driver Services Centers were no longer allowing some DACA recipients to renew their licenses.
Among those affected is Itzel Sanchez, a 32-year-old Nashville realtor and mother of two young children, ages five and two. She told the station the office said it could not renew her license, and she expects the change will prevent her from driving in a month and some days. “I'm 32. I'm a mom of two, a five-year-old and a two-year-old,” Sanchez said, according to the report.
What the State Says About Eligibility
The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security has said that DACA is a form of deferred action and does not itself confer lawful immigration status, per the agency's statement to the outlet. The department has also said a DACA work permit alone is not sufficient to qualify someone for a Tennessee driver's license, and that an employment authorization card by itself does not establish the authorized-stay status required for a temporary license.
That framework lines up with the state's own published guidance. The Tennessee Department of Safety says an Employment Authorization Document primarily shows authorization to work and does not establish immigration status or a period of authorized stay. Separately, the Tennessee Driver Services renewal page states that holders of a temporary license or identification license must renew in person and provide updated proof of both temporary legal presence and length of authorized stay. The department has also said some people who previously held a license could be affected at renewal if their federal documentation no longer establishes that eligibility.
Advocates Point to a 2025 Special Session
The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition believes the denials may be connected to new state rules passed during a 2025 special session called by Gov. Bill Lee, though the organization is asking the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security for more transparency about exactly what changed. Dreamers of Nashville shared a video showing a DACA recipient being turned away while trying to renew a license, putting a face on what advocates describe as a sudden shift in enforcement.
TIRRC Votes campaign director Cesar Bautista said DACA provides critical support for people who arrived in the country at a young age, and he described the policy's effects as a ripple effect that extends well beyond the individual recipient. Bautista warned that if workers such as teachers can't reach their jobs, the consequences could spread across families and whole communities.
A Backlog Already Years in the Making
The license denials land on top of a federal renewal process that has slowed dramatically. According to CBS News, the backlog of pending DACA renewal applications more than quadrupled between September 2025 and June 30, 2026, climbing to over 125,000 applications nationwide. USCIS processing fell from an average of 4,500 to 6,000 applications per week down to fewer than 1,900 per week by November 2025, the outlet reported, while the number of active DACA holders dropped 14% to 436,350 over that same span.
The denial rate has also ticked upward, reaching 1.1% from November 2025 through June 2026 compared with 0.67% in the years before the slowdown, per the CBS News analysis. The National Immigration Law Center reported that as of March 24, 2026, USCIS said most renewal requests were taking about 3.5 months, partly because the agency restarted biometric appointments that add extra time to the process. USCIS recommends that recipients file renewals 120 to 150 days, or four to five months, before their current status expires.
Delays of this length aren't unprecedented — CBS News noted that DACA renewal wait times previously stretched to nearly five months in 2016 and more than four months in both 2021 and 2024. Recipients also pay around $500 every two years simply to keep their status current, a cost compounded now by the added uncertainty over whether a renewed status will even translate into a renewed license. Tennessee had moved in the opposite direction on related licensing questions before, joining Florida, Arkansas and Mississippi in passing legislation to remove barriers for federally authorized immigrants seeking professional licenses, according to an earlier News Channel 5 report.
For now, recipients like Sanchez are left waiting to see whether the state clarifies its position before their current licenses expire. TIRRC is pushing for transparency from the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, leaving families to plan around a policy whose full scope has not yet been spelled out.
