The Iowa transportation department announced late last month that it will not issue driver’s licenses to young undocumented immigrants who benefit from deferred action, which allows them to legally remain in the U.S. temporarily. About 5,000 undocumented immigrants are eligible for deferred action in Iowa, and at least one person, Omar Del Jesus Mex Valle, had received his license after being granted deferred action in October.

Valle told the Des Moines Register that he received his license within a week after finding out he had been granted deferred action. “I hope they don’t take it from me. I need it to go to my job, and to do stuff for my family,” he said.

Paul Trombino, Iowa transportation director, said department officials will inform anyone with deferred action status who received a license that their license is no longer valid.

Iowa is one of six states to prevent deferred action beneficiaries from receiving driver’s licenses. Seventeen states, including California and Illinois, have said that undocumented immigrants with temporary legal status from the program can apply for driver’s licenses, and three states — Washington, New Mexico and Utah — do not require proof of citizenship to receive a driver’s license.

So far, the ACLU has filed lawsuits against Arizona and Michigan from blocking young undocumented immigrants who have been granted temporary legal status from being issued driver’s licenses. Randall Wilson, Iowa ACLU’s legal director, said he was surprised by the state’s decision. “These people have been granted status to stay in the United States for a period of time, and whether you want to call it illegal, legal or indeterminate, it doesn’t matter,” Wilson told the Des Moines Register. “They are here, so this issue needs to be addressed, either legislatively or in the courts.”

For undocumented immigrants, even those with a spouse or child in the United States, applying for legal residency can mean leaving the country for as long as ten years. A new rule issued Wednesday by the the Department of Homeland Security will ease the process starting March 4 for as many as 1 million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, by allowing immigrants who can prove that time away from a parent, spouse or child will cause “extreme hardship” to return to the United States while they apply for legal status. The Los Angeles Times explains:

Once approved, applicants would be required to leave the U.S. briefly in order to return to their native country and pick up their visa. [...]

The new procedures could reduce a family’s time apart to one week in some cases, officials said. In recent years a few relatives of U.S. citizens have been killed in foreign countries while waiting for their applications to be resolved. […]

Until now, many immigrants who might seek legal status do not pursue it out of fear they will not receive a “hardship waiver” of strict U.S. immigration laws: An illegal immigrant who has overstayed a visa for more than six months is barred from reentering the U.S. for three years; those who overstay more than a year are barred for 10 years.

The move is the latest by the Obama administration to ease harsh immigration policy through the executive branch. An August initiative, which allows eligible young people to apply for temporary permits to stay in the United States, has already succeeded in temporarily blocking deportation of more than 4,500 immigrants, with some 150,000 other applications pending. Overall, however, the Obama administration has continued to set records in the total number of people deported, saying that it is obligated to continue robust deportations until Congress reforms immigration policy. Among those deported over the past two years were more than 200,000 undocumented immigrants whose children were U.S. citizens. More than 5,100 children landed in foster care as a result of parent deportations, and that number is projected to increase to 15,000 if the current rate of deportations continues. Obama has promised to introduce comprehensive immigration reform in 2013 that includes a “path to citizenship” for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

As Univision’s Ted Hesson points out, this latest rule change Obama initiative will not apply to same-sex couples so long as the Defense of Marriage Act remains in effect.

Each day, about 3,000 young undocumented immigrants are applying for deferred action, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano explained last week. As of October 10, that added up to almost 180,000 eligible youth who were applying for temporary deportation deferrals since the policy, which President Obama announced in June, went into effect on August 15, and Napolitano said the number of applications is up to 200,000.

So far, about 4,500 undocumented immigrants have completed the process and received temporary work permits thanks to Obama’s directive, and more than 150,000 have been scheduled for biometric interviews. But it is a long, slow process that can take up to four to six months. Here’s what the process looks like:

With about 950,000 people eligible to apply immediately, almost 19 percent of applications have been received and accepted for processing by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the first two months of DACA. The last time that this many undocumented immigrants could apply for deportation deferrals was in 1986, when then-President Ronald Reagan authorized the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), a successful program that was able to legalize a large number of undocumented immigrants who were eligible in a short time period. Even with its success, only about 13 percent of potential IRCA applicants had filed their paperwork in the first three months of the program, fewer than the first two months’ worth of deferred action applications.

But if Mitt Romney is elected, the entire process for deferred action would stop. While the Republican presidential candidate has said he would not take away the temporary deportation deferrals from any undocumented immigrant who had already been approved, Romney said he would end the program to grant deportation deferrals to young undocumented immigrants who qualify. Some DREAMers say they are concerned about applying for a program that could disappear depending on who wins the presidential race on November 6.

With 950,000 potential applicants and a wait time for applications to be processed that can lasts for months — on top of the amount of time it takes for undocumented immigrants to gather the right documents and fill out the paperwork — it’s likely that tens of thousands of these young adults will still be in limbo by January when the next president is inaugurated. And if it’s Romney, it will be the end of a program that could give up to 1.7 million young undocumented immigrants temporary legal status while lawmakers continue to discuss a long-term immigration solution.

ThinkProgress blogger Adam Peck and Patrick Oakford, a research assistant at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, contributed to this report.

Mitt Romney tried to moderate his immigration positions on Monday before tonight’s debate in Colorado when he said he would not take away the temporary visas from undocumented immigrants who benefit from Obama’s deferred action policy. “I’m not going to take something that they’ve purchased,” he told The Denver Post. He added that before those two-year visas expire, “we will have the full immigration reform plan that I’ve proposed,” although he gave no details about his immigration plan.

Today, his campaign confirmed to the New York Times that Romney would end the program to grant deportation deferrals to young undocumented immigrants who qualify:

Romney campaign confirms to NYT they will halt deferred deportations for undoc immigrants when he takes office, if elected

— Julia Preston (@JuliaPrestonNYT) October 3, 2012

Romney campaign: he will honor deportation deferrals granted but halt the program when he takes office, seek “permanent” fix

— Julia Preston (@JuliaPrestonNYT) October 3, 2012

As many as 1.7 million DREAM Act-eligible undocumented immigrants could benefit from the policy, which gives them temporary legal status to work in the U.S. More than 80,000 people have applied for deferred action since the policy went into effect on August 15, but the Huffington Post reports that the wait time for the process can take up to four to six months. In the first month, 29 undocumented immigrants received deferrals, so it is likely that most of the applicants will not receive an answer before the inauguration in January.

Ever since President Obama announced a new deferred action policy in June, proving some undocumented immigration with a two-year deportation referral and permits, Mitt Romney has refused to say whether or not he would continue the program. Fellow Republicans and a campaign adviser have said Romney would undo the directive, though the GOP presidential candidate has repeatedly dodged the question.

But on the eve of his first debate with President Obama in Colorado, Romney said he would not take away temporary work permits from those who benefit from Obama’s deferred action plan, although it was unclear if he would continue to provide deportation deferrals:

Young illegal immigrants who receive temporary work permits to stay in the United States under an executive order issued by President Barack Obama would not be deported under a Mitt Romney administration, the GOP presidential hopeful told The Denver Post Monday.

“The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid. I’m not going to take something that they’ve purchased,” Romney said. “Before those visas have expired we will have the full immigration reform plan that I’ve proposed.”

Following the announcement about the directive, Romney criticized Obama for going around Congress to implement the policy a few months before the election.

During the Republican primary, Romney had said he would veto legislation that provides a path to citizenship. He opposes the DREAM Act, which would add $329 billion to the U.S. economy by 2030, but said he would support a version of the bill to give legal status to undocumented immigrants who served in the military. And Romney has supported harmful “self-deportation” policies to force undocumented immigrants to leave the U.S. instead of “going to round people up.” To fix the U.S.’s immigration system, Romney continues to repeat that he wants to work with Congress on a comprehensive solution, but he gave The Denver Post no details about that plan.

Almost one month after young undocumented immigrants began applying for deferred action, federal immigration officials announced that about 72,000 DREAM Act-eligible young adults have applied so far. The new policy, which President Obama announced in June, gives undocumented immigrants who qualify two-year deportation deferrals and permits to legally work in the U.S.

Officials in the Department of Homeland Security have worked quickly to process applications as they have poured in, with California leading in the number of applications from undocumented immigrants in that state. The largest portion of deferred action applicants were born in Mexico, but immigration officials said a large number also came from South Koreans, who make up a much smaller population of immigrants in the U.S.

Republicans, however, are renewing their attacks against the program. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) questioned “the speed at which the deferrals are being granted” in a letter to John Morton, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, on Tuesday and back in August, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an informal immigration adviser to Mitt Romney, filed a lawsuit challenging the policy. Kobach is representing 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees who disagree with the directive. “It places ICE agents in an untenable position where their political superiors are ordering them to violate federal law,” Kobach said.

Mitt Romney has not explained if he would continue the deferred action policy as president — although one of his advisers said Romney would end it — but at this rate, the New York Times estimates that at least 200,000 people potentially could have applied for deferred action by the presidential election in November.

Texas Senate nominee Ted Cruz (R)

Asked by Telemundo whether Romney should reinstate deportations of young people granted deferred action, Cruz said, “I do.”

“I think it is without authority, and we’re a nation of rule of law, and it is not defending anyone’s freedom to be undermining rule of law,” he said of President Obama’s June announcement that his administration would grant work authorizations and deferred action — reprieve from deportation concerns for two years — to some undocumented young people.

Cruz said the U.S. should be a country that celebrates legal immigration “who follow the rules” instead of supporting the deferred action policy. That’s not a surprising position from a GOP candidate who campaigned on the fact that once fought to ensure that the state would execute an undocumented immigrant.

In his Telemundo interview, Cruz added that he doesn’t “think the Hispanic community is behind efforts for amnesty.” But a poll from Latino Decisions shows that Latino voters are very supportive of Obama’s deportation directive as well as the DREAM Act.