Judge Orders Trump Administration To Bring Back Daca Recipient Deported To Mexico

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to bring back a woman abruptly deported to Mexico last month despite her active protections under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez arrived in the United States in 1998 as an undocumented 15-year-old. She was granted DACA protection in 2013 and lives in Sacramento with a 22-year-old U.S. citizen daughter.

On Feb. 18, Estrada — with her daughter in tow — attended a hearing as part of the process to attain lawful permanent residency. There, federal immigration officers denied her application, informed her that she was the subject of a decades-old removal order and detained her. She was deported to Mexico the next morning, despite protesting that her DACA status remained active.

In a Monday order, U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins called the deportation a “flagrant violation” of DACA’s promise of protection to those who arrived in the country as minors, as well as a violation of Estrada’s constitutional due process rights. Coggins, a Biden appointee, directed the administration to facilitate Estrada’s return by March 30.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Justice Department argued that the judge had no power to intervene in the dispute, saying Estrada was subject to a valid deportation order and that her DACA status merely deprioritized her deportation rather than eliminated the threat of it altogether.

But Coggins said the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling preserving DACA underscored that DACA was not simply a matter of executive discretion but rather “a program for conferring affirmative relief.”

Coggins said her power also extended to demanding the return of someone illegally deported, which courts have blessed under “extreme circumstances.”

“It is difficult to argue that Petitioner’s removal constitutes anything less than an ‘extreme circumstance,’” the judge wrote. “Less than 24 hours after Petitioner’s good faith appearance to pursue lawful permanent resident status in this country — she was removed to a nation where she had not lived in over 27 years pursuant to an order purportedly entered against her when she was fifteen years old.”

In her bid to be returned to the United States, Estrada told the court that her deportation had resulted in “severe emotional trauma and financial hardship” for her family. And her daughter similarly described feeling helpless as she watched her mother be detained and led away. She said the weeks since her mother’s arrest and deportation had left her “feeling completely alone and afraid.”