A Texas mother deported to Mexico despite having legal permission to stay in the US after arriving as a child has filed a lawsuit against the federal government after it notified her it would be terminating her permission because of "unauthorised travel" stemming from her deportation.
Jessica Treviño, 34, filed a lawsuit through her attorney this week asking a federal judge to intervene.
Treviño 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 living in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas. Their three children, all US citizens, are living with family on the US side near the border.
After being brought to the country as a child at the age of 7, Treviño subsequently received legal permission at 20 to remain in the US under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, or DACA. Introduced in 2012, the scheme does not confer legal status but has allowed hundreds of thousands of people who had come to the US as children to temporarily remain and obtain work permits.
As a recipient, she must maintain a clean criminal record and is not allowed to travel outside the United States.
Her attorney, David Rozas, filed the lawsuit. He noted her status and work permit were most recently 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 she was deported from the country by the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment as of Thursday afternoon.
Rozas filed a petition asking a federal judge in Brownsville to declare the woman's expulsion was unlawful, order the government to facilitate Treviño's return to the US and allow her 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," her attorney added.
An immigration judge under the Justice Department had issued a voluntary departure order for Treviño in February while she was in ICE custody, but a valid 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," Treviño said on Thursday.
Her three children are set to start school next month and their mother said she would like to be there.
The current Trump administration has deported 86 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients and arrested 241 others, according to a DHS letter sent in February to Democratic Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois.
Advocates for the deferred action recipients say Treviño's deportation is part of a pattern.
"This is what a deliberate, systematic effort to destroy [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] 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 defending immigration rights.
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