DACA recipient Jessica Trevino sues US after deportation to Mexico

Mcallen,UPDATED: Jul 31, 2026 09:50 IST

A Texas mother who was deported to Mexico despite having permission to stay in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, programme has sued the federal government after it told her it would end that permission over “unauthorised travel” linked to her deportation.

Jessica Trevino, 34, filed the lawsuit this week through her lawyer, David Rozas, asking a federal judge to step in. Rozas has asked the court to declare that her removal was unlawful, order the government to facilitate her return to the US, and allow her DACA status to remain valid. “The government had no lawful basis to remove her, and we filed this petition to demand she be brought back home,” he said.

Trevino and her husband were arrested in December after federal agents followed them into a Home Depot parking lot in South Texas. Both were deported and are now living in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas. Their three children, all US citizens, are staying with family on the US side near the border.

Trevino was brought to the US at the age of 7 and later, at 20, received permission to remain in the country under DACA. Introduced in 2012, the programme does not grant legal status but has allowed hundreds of thousands of people who arrived in the US as children to stay temporarily and get work permits. As a DACA recipient, she must keep a clean criminal record and cannot travel outside the United States. Rozas said her status and work permit had most recently been authorised until April 2027.

Last week, US Citizenship and Immigration Services sent her a notice of intent to terminate her status for “unauthorised travel outside of the United States on or about March 25, 2026”, the same day the Department of Homeland Security deported her. DHS had not responded to a request for comment as of Thursday afternoon. An immigration judge under the Justice Department had issued a voluntary departure order for Trevino in February while she was in ICE custody, but a valid DACA status prevents the Department of Homeland Security from deporting her.

“I would be so blessed to be able to go back home, because that’s what I long for most right now. I’m really desperate. It’s been seven months since I’ve been home,” Trevino said on Thursday. She said she wants to be back as her three children are due to start school next month. According to a DHS letter sent in February to Democratic Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the current Trump administration has deported 86 DACA recipients and arrested 241 others. Advocates for DACA recipients say Trevino’s case is part of a wider pattern. “This is what a deliberate, systematic effort to destroy DACA looks like in practice: target recipients one by one, manufacture justifications after the fact, and leave their children to grow up without them,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a policy organisation that defends immigration rights.

The lawsuit centres on Trevino’s claim that she was deported despite holding valid DACA protection, and now faces losing that protection because of the very removal she is challenging, while her children remain in the US without her.

With PTI Inputs

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