Washington DC - Immigrants' rights advocates and lawmakers on Thursday slammed the Trump administration's targeting of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients as they unveiled a new abduction tracker.

The Home is Here campaign's new tracker lists nearly 20 DACA recipients with valid status and more immigrant youth currently being held in US custody.

DACA provides protection from deportation and work authorization to around 525,210 people, known as Dreamers, according to survey data released in August. Recipients must have arrived in the US under the age of 16 and continuously resided in the country since June 15, 2007.

A US appeals court in January allowed current DACA recipients across the country to keep their protections as long as they met their requirements and renewed their status.

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Nevertheless, ICE has targeted them as part of the Trump administration's sweeping assault on immigrant communities, with government officials claiming the Obama-era program does not confer legal status in the US.

"DACA is and always has been lawful. That is why every attempt to try and end DACA through the courts over the last 13 years has failed," United We Dream campaign director and former DACA recipient Deya Aldana said in a Thursday press call.

"What we are seeing is a blatant and alarming escalation in the effort to chip away at and weaken DACA – not in one fell swoop, but piece by piece in the hopes that the American people aren't paying attention," she continued.

"But we are paying attention, and we will be tracking every single piece of evidence to make it undeniably clear the threats DACA recipients and immigrant youth face in this moment."

Also on Thursday's call, relatives of detained DACA recipients shared heartbreaking stories of families being torn apart by the Trump administration's actions.

Alejandra, wife of 28-year-old Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira, described her husband's August 13 abduction by plainclothes officers – who she said showed no warrant – as he was leaving his mother's home in El Paso, Texas.

"They violently ripped him away in front of his children. It was only through the ring camera at his mother's home that I could hear the kids' screams. No family should ever have to endure that kind of terror," Alejandra said.

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Alejandra added that she and her husband, who is currently being held at the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico, had recently welcomed a new baby daughter, now three months old.

"Even at her young age, I can feel her longing for her dad. She calms when I show her his picture, but she doesn't have him here to hold her, to rock her to sleep, or to see her first smiles," she said.

"No child should be denied the love and comfort of their father, and no father should be forced to miss the earliest and most precious moments of his child's life."

Democratic lawmakers who joined the call vowed to keep fighting to end the attacks on DACA recipients and their families and communities.

"We will continue this fight today, tomorrow, and every day until we get it done because Dreamers deserve the stability, they deserve dignity, and they deserve a future. And we will not stop until this country keeps its promise to help them and protect them fully and forever," said Representative Sylvia Garcia.

The Texas Democrat earlier this year reintroduced the American Dream and Promise Act to create a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, Temporary Protected Status holders, and people with Deferred Enforced Departure.

"We are going to stand up for these DACA recipients. They are the best of America, and they deserve protection," Senator Dick Durbin insisted.