Witnesses are disputing the federal government’s account of how the only so-called “Dreamer” deported from the U.S. under President Trump ended up in Mexico.
Court filings in a lawsuit related to the deportation of Juan Manual Montes support the 23-year-old’s claim that immigration agents wrongly forced him across the border.
The Department of Homeland Security said that Montes crossed the border into Mexico voluntarily, which would immediately cancel his DACA status that grants him deportation protection and a work permit.
But in supporting statements filed with the Federal District Court in Southern California, witnesses, including the last people who saw Montes in the U.S. and the first to see him in Mexico, say he was forcibly removed from the country after midnight on Feb. 19.
Montes, 23, said he had just finished dinner with a friend and was seeking a ride home when he was seized by immigration agents on the streets of Calexico, Calif., where he lived with his family since age 9.
Both sides agreed that after he was back in Mexico, Montes tried to re-enter the U.S. the next night by jumping the border wall, and was detained by Border Patrol agents and deported back to Mexico.
Lawyers for Montes said he was the first recipient of former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program to be removed from the country.
The program provides deportation relief and work permits to immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
The program grants protection for two years, after which beneficiaries can apply again. Under the Trump administration, new applicants have still been able to request DACA protection through the Homeland Security Department’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
But DHS Secretary John Kelly told Democratic lawmakers this week that he’s doubtful the DACA program will survive a pending court challenge, and urged them to pursue a legislative solution to replace it.
When USA TODAY first reported Montes’s case, the Homeland Security Department said his DACA status had expired in 2015. The next day, the department changed its account, saying his DACA status remained, but that it was revoked when the government claims he voluntarily left the U.S.
Attorneys for Montes said he is cognitively impaired because of a brain injury he suffered as a child.
Since he was deported, Montes has been living with relatives in western Mexico.
