The administration has said DACA isn’t a right to stay in the United States “indefinitely.” One man with DACA was detained and deported to Mexico in a matter of days.
May 15, 2026, 5:00 a.m. ET
There had to have been a mistake, Martin Padilla recalled telling the immigration agents.
An inspector in the oil and gas industry, he was about to fly to Sacramento for work when the agents pulled him aside at Corpus Christi International Airport in Texas last August. Stopped at the security X-ray scanner, he told them he had DACA status, referring to the Obama-era program designed to protect undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as young children. His DACA card, he said, was in his wallet.
It didn’t matter.
Within hours of the Aug. 5 encounter, Mr. Padilla had been detained. Days later, he was deported to his native Mexico, leaving behind his American wife, their three children and the family’s new home.
Mr. Padilla, 35, is among about 500,000 people enrolled in DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — which is supposed to shield them from deportation and allow them to work legally. And he is one of the dozens of DACA recipients who have been expelled from the country by the Trump administration.
Mr. Padilla’s lawyers challenged his deportation, arguing in a federal court filing that his due process rights had been violated. After seven months, Mr. Padilla was allowed to return to the United States.
With the Trump administration working to weaken a wide range of protections, DACA recipients are realizing that the program, born of bipartisan support for a generation of young undocumented immigrants, is no longer the reliable shield it seemed to be for most of the last two decades.
Since Mr. Trump took office last year, 650 DACA recipients have been taken into custody by ICE, and nearly 90 percent of the people arrested had previously been charged with or convicted of a U.S. crime, according to D.H.S. Lawyers contend the Trump administration is relying on minor infractions and decades-old deportation orders to justify detentions and removals of a protected group.
In a letter to Senate Democrats in February, Kristi Noem, then the homeland security secretary, justified the arrest and deportation of DACA recipients by saying that the program “comes with no right or entitlement to remain in the United States indefinitely.”
In a statement, D.H.S. said that any person covered by DACA “may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons including if they’ve committed a crime.”
Last month, the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department and oversees immigration courts, ruled that DACA status doesn’t prevent recipients from being deported.
The decision deepened the fear and uncertainty gripping Dreamers.
Mr. Padilla’s lawyer filed a complaint in federal court in December. Before the judge ruled, government lawyers agreed in February to admit Mr. Padilla back into the United States. On April 24, Mr. Padilla was admitted through the port of entry at Brownsville, Texas.