A Texas mother and longtime DACA recipient has filed a lawsuit against the federal government after being deported to Mexico despite holding legal protection from removal, and now officials are moving to terminate her immigration status by citing the deportation itself as “unauthorized travel.”
Jessica Treviño, 34, was arrested in December 2025 along with her husband during a traffic stop at a Home Depot parking lot in South Texas. Both were held in immigration custody for months before being deported to Mexico on March 25, 2026, even though Treviño’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status and work permit were not set to expire until April 2027.
Within weeks of her deportation, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sent Treviño a notice of intent to terminate her DACA status, citing “unauthorized travel outside of the United States on or about March 25, 2026” — the very day she was deported. The circularity of the government’s reasoning has become the focal point of her legal challenge.
“The government had no lawful basis to remove her, and we filed this petition to demand she be brought back home,” said David Rozas, Treviño’s attorney. Rozas filed suit this week in federal court in Brownsville, asking a judge to declare the deportation unlawful, order the government to return Treviño to the United States, and allow her DACA status to remain valid.
Treviño arrived in the United States at age 7 and received DACA protection at age 20. As a DACA recipient, she was required to maintain a clean criminal record and was prohibited from traveling outside the country without advance parole approval. According to legal experts and government guidelines, DACA recipients who depart without advance parole documentation face potential loss of status if they cannot re-enter the country legally.
The paradox in Treviño’s case is stark: an immigration judge had issued a voluntary departure order in February while she remained in custody, but under DACA regulations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was legally barred from executing that deportation order while her status remained valid. Yet the deportation occurred regardless, raising questions about whether the agency deliberately circumvented the protections the program is supposed to provide.
Now separated from her three U.S. citizen children, ages 13, 14 and 16, Treviño is living in Matamoros, Mexico, just across the border from Brownsville. Her children are staying with relatives on the U.S. side of the border. Speaking from Mexico on Thursday, she expressed desperation about her situation. “I would be so blessed to be able to go back home, because that’s what I long for most right now. It’s been seven months since I’ve been home. Her three children are set to start school next month and their mother said she would like to be there.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment about the deportation or the termination notice.
Treviño’s case has drawn attention from immigration advocates, who argue it exemplifies a broader pattern in which the Trump administration is systematically dismantling DACA protections. According to data provided to Congress, the current administration has deported 86 DACA recipients and arrested 241 others between January 2025 and November 2025, the most recent period for which official figures are available.
“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, an immigration advocacy organization.
The targeting of DACA recipients has accelerated under the Trump administration despite the program’s foundational promise of protection from deportation. The Obama-era initiative, established in 2012, allows undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children to receive temporary protection from removal and work permits. It does not provide a pathway to citizenship but has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to temporarily remain in the United States, obtain jobs, and build lives.
The legal case raises fundamental questions about due process and the government’s obligations to respect its own immigration statutes. Rozas argues that the government’s justification for stripping Treviño’s status amounts to punishing her for a deportation it illegally carried out. The outcome of her lawsuit could have implications for other DACA recipients facing similar circumstances.