WASHINGTON — A path to a green card for DACA recipients is back on the table in Washington. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on Monday, November 9, that Congress could create a way for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — the program that shields people brought to the United States as children — to become permanent residents, while insisting the administration will “never” accept amnesty, according to Fox News, Time and the Daily Wire. Fox News described the remarks as Mullin's first public suggestion of such a pathway.

Source: Immigration Analytics summary of Fox News, Time and Daily Wire reporting, Nov 9, 2026

Speaking to reporters at a counter-drone conference in Maryland, Mullin put the decision in Congress's hands. If lawmakers want an immigration reform that would “look at DACA and figure out a way that these individuals can become maybe legal permanent citizens or something like this, that'll be up to Congress to do that,” he said, according to the Daily Wire and The National News Desk, which credited Politico. Mullin said President Donald Trump had told him to start talking with the Democrats who have been calling him about legislation in the new Congress, relaying the president's instruction as: “Let's start working with them and then let's meet at some point.”

The limits came in the same breath. “We're never going to allow amnesty to happen,” Mullin said, according to the Daily Wire, and he added that the administration's approach to enforcement “isn't going to change.” Fox News reported that Mullin said he and the president had not discussed changing enforcement policy. Nothing in Monday's remarks changes any recipient's paperwork today: no bill has been introduced under this opening, no form has changed, and no deadline has moved.

A follow-on from the president's Sunday comments

Monday's remarks are the newest development in a fast-moving week on immigration — and they build directly on what came before. In his Sunday interview on CBS's “60 Minutes,” covered by this site on November 8, President Trump said his deportation campaign might have been “too tough” and suggested working “a deal” for people who have lived in the country for 10 or 15 years. Mullin's comments are the first time a cabinet secretary has attached that opening specifically to DACA, the childhood-arrivals program that has been fought over in Congress and the courts for more than a decade.

Why only Congress can deliver a green card here

Mullin's phrase “legal permanent citizens” blends two different legal steps. A lawful permanent resident holds a green card; citizenship comes later, usually through naturalization after five years. Either way, the executive branch cannot deliver it alone. DACA itself is deferred action — a decision not to pursue removal, plus a work permit — and it is not a lawful status, a point the Department of Homeland Security itself made in a March post on X quoted by Fox News, saying DACA “does not confer any form of legal status in this country.” Most recipients entered the United States without inspection, and Section 245(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act generally allows a person to adjust to permanent residence inside the country only after being inspected and admitted or paroled. That is why only recipients who travelled on advance parole and returned, and who have a qualifying family or employment petition, have had any route to a green card — and the majority have none.

A statute would have to waive or rewrite those requirements. The closest existing model is the American Dream and Promise Act, which passed the House in 2019 and again in 2021 but never received a Senate vote. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries named that bill on CBS on Monday as a starting point that would restore protections for DACA and TPS holders, Time reported — a sign that Democrats intend to put a specific, already-drafted bill at the centre of any negotiation rather than starting from a blank page.

The politics of a deal remain steep. Democrats will control both chambers of the new Congress next year, The National News Desk reported, but most legislation still needs 60 votes to clear the Senate, so any DACA bill would need Republican support. Jeffries has said reforming ICE and ending mass deportation would also be part of the conversation, according to Time, while the House Freedom Caucus posted on X that it rejects amnesty. If an agreement emerges, reporting on Monday suggested it would likely resemble the trade that has stalled for two decades: permanent status for people who arrived as children, paired with enforcement measures Republicans can present as a win. Mullin's sharp split between DACA relief and “amnesty” suggests the administration would treat people brought as children differently from the broader undocumented population.

What happens next is in Congress. Watch for a bill to be introduced in the new Congress, for the White House to say whether the president would sign a DACA-only measure or insists on a wider package, and for the first Senate headcount toward 60 votes. For immigrant families — including Indian and Punjabi families in the United States whose children grew up American in every way except on paper — Monday's remarks are the first time the cabinet secretary who oversees ICE, CBP and USCIS has described a DACA deal as Congress's call rather than a nonstarter. The open question is whether the president's comments survive the pushback from his own base that earlier rounds of deal talk already drew.