Protected but deported anyway, as Trump goes after 'dreamers'

Jose Contreras felt safe from deportation under a program launched years ago under Barack Obama, but the Trump administration expelled him anyway.

The day Contreras got the shocking news, at a routine immigration hearing, he said officials laughed when he asked for a stay extension because his wife was about to have their first child.

"They looked at me like I had a third eye," Contreras told AFP. He was deported to Honduras that same day, and spent 118 days there until he made it back, thanks to a court order.

Contreras is one of several hundred people caught up in a particularly sad and frustrating chapter of President Donald Trump's aggressive and sometimes violent crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

People like Contreras came to America as minors but never got citizenship or residency. Still, this is the only country they call home.

And they are supposed to benefit from a program launched in 2012 called DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, designed to protect such people from deportation and let them live and work in America as they try to upgrade their immigration status.

DACA is estimated to be protecting around 500,000 people, popularly known as "dreamers," according to government figures.  

But the Trump administration has arrested at least 343 of them and deported at least 86, according to an NGO called Home is Here, quoting a letter from the Department of Homeland Security to Congress.

On January 2 Contreras was handcuffed when he showed up for his immigration hearing, put on a plane and flown to his native Honduras.

"I was a DACA recipient. I was a dreamer. Then I got deported," Contreras said. His son was born in Texas, without him, in late February.

"I lost it, you know. I fell to the ground. And then I cried," he said. "Because I wasn't planning to not be there for my son."

- 'Unlawful and inhumane' -

Then there is the case of 42-year-old Maria de Jesus Estrada, who came to America at age 15 and lived in California until her life, too, abruptly changed at an immigration hearing she attended with her 23-year-old daughter. 

Walking into a room with six immigration agents, she was told to put her hands behind back and prepare to be arrested, right then and there. Panicking, she asked for a minute.   

"I need you guys to give me a minute. I said, 'I'm not gonna resist anything. I just need a minute.
 I need to hold my daughter. I need to hug my daughter.'" 

She was deported to Mexico later that day.

In both cases, immigration officials said Contreras and Estrada were deported because they had orders to that effect pending from when they were much younger.

And in both cases, US courts ultimately ruled their deportation illegal and ordered they could return, which they did.

"The cases of Jose Contreras and Maria de Jesus Estrada are evidence of this administration's unlawful and inhumane distortion of the law," said Stacy Tolchin, a lawyer who defended both of them. 

Trump tried to do away with DACA altogether during his first stint in the White House but the courts stopped him. Now he is pressing Congress for a permanent solution to America's complex immigration imbroglio.

"We are seeing this administration dismantling DACA through delay, denials, detentions and deportations," said Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, an advocacy group.

- 'Wake up at home' -

DACA beneficiary Jessica Trevino, who came to the United States from Mexico at age seven, has not been as lucky.

Immigration agents arrested her in Alamo, Texas, on December 28 as she left church with her family.

The agents roughed up her husband. Video footage of the encounter went viral. 

Both were deported to Mexico in March and they are waiting for US courts to hear their case. Their three children stayed behind, living with relatives.

Trevino said she hopes to be back for her daughter's 15th birthday in August.

"Although I was not born in the United States, I have lived here my whole life," said Trevino, who now lives in Matamoros, Mexico, waiting and hoping.

"Sometimes I go to sleep thinking that I will wake up at home," she said.

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© Agence France-Presse