A 34-year-old Texas mother with active DACA status valid through 2027 is suing the federal government to reverse her deportation to Mexico, and DHS is now trying to strip her protections by accusing her of "unauthorized travel" it carried out.
Attorneys for Jessica Treviño Villegas filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, naming DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons as defendants. The lawsuit seeks a court order immediately returning Villegas to the United States and a declaration that her removal was unlawful. Newsweek reported the filing, which argues that Villegas "cannot be lawfully removed while in DACA status" and that the government has refused to bring her back.
The core dispute is straightforward. Villegas held valid DACA status permitting her to remain in the country through April 2027. The government deported her on March 25, 2026. Then DHS sent her a notice threatening to terminate that same DACA status, on the grounds that she had engaged in "unauthorized travel" outside the United States on or about March 25. The travel DHS cited was the deportation DHS itself carried out.
Villegas, who came to the United States from Mexico at age seven, had lived in Alamo, Texas, and received DACA at age 20. She has three teenage children, all U.S. citizens. Her DACA had been renewed consistently over 14 years.
The chain of events that led to her deportation began in late December, when DHS agents arrested Villegas and her husband in South Texas. DHS officials said the arrest followed a collision between the couple's vehicle and an unmarked Homeland Security Investigations car. Officials also said Villegas's husband had been in the country without permission at the time of the arrest.
What specific immigration violation, if any, DHS alleged against Villegas herself, as distinct from her husband, is not clear from the available record. Nor is it clear whether her husband was also deported or what charges, if any, were filed against either of them beyond the removal proceedings.
By February, Villegas had received an order of voluntary departure "under safeguards", a legal mechanism that typically allows an individual to leave the country on their own by a set deadline, in this case March 19. But Villegas remained in DHS custody past that deadline. Six days later, on March 25, the government deported her to Mexico.
DHS officials maintain she cooperated with the process. Their public statement was blunt: "She left the U.S. on March 25, 2026, and will NOT return." Officials also said Villegas "knowingly accepted voluntary departure and waived appeal."
Attorney David Rozas sees the facts differently. He contends the government had no legal authority to remove Villegas while her DACA status remained active.
Rozas said in a statement:
"Her DACA remains valid through April 2027. The government had no lawful basis to remove her, and we filed this petition to demand she be brought back home."
The lawsuit itself states that Villegas "was in valid DACA status at the time she was removed" and that "respondents have refused to facilitate petitioner's return to the United States and instead have attempted to revoke her DACA status because of her unlawful removal." The case number, assigned judge, and whether any emergency hearing has been scheduled are not yet part of the public record.
The broader legal question matters beyond this single case. DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, has allowed hundreds of thousands of people brought to the United States as children to temporarily remain and obtain work permits. The program has faced repeated legal challenges in federal courts, and its boundaries remain contested. Whether active DACA status legally bars removal is the central issue in Villegas's lawsuit.
The most striking element of the case is the DACA termination notice DHS sent Villegas after her deportation. The notice, sent last week, cited "unauthorized travel" outside the United States on or about March 25 as the basis for revoking her protected status. March 25 is the same date DHS deported her.
In practical terms, the government removed Villegas from the country and then used that removal as grounds to strip the legal status that her attorneys say should have prevented the removal in the first place. The circular logic is difficult to miss. If her DACA was valid when she was deported, then the deportation itself, not any voluntary decision by Villegas, created the "unauthorized travel" DHS now cites against her.
Villegas released a statement describing her situation. She said she had followed every rule since first applying for DACA 14 years ago, renewed her status, and believed the country would do right by her family.
"Instead, I was taken from my children. And now, even after everything, the government is trying to take away the very protections that were supposed to keep me here."
Her three children are set to return to school next month. Villegas is in Mexico.
Tania Chavez, executive director of La Unión del Pueblo Entero, an advocacy organization, issued a statement characterizing the deportation in stark terms. Chavez called Villegas "violently detained and illegally deported", characterizations that are not independently verified in the court filing or DHS statements but reflect the advocacy group's position.
Chavez said in her statement:
"The same agency that manufactured this chaos in Jessica's life is now threatening to cause even more harm by taking away her DACA protections. It's cruel, unlawful, and we cannot normalize this."
Immigration enforcement debates have intensified in recent months. DHS disclosed in a February letter to Illinois Senator Richard Durbin that 86 DACA recipients had been deported and 241 arrested during the current Trump administration. Those numbers suggest Villegas's case is not isolated, though the specific circumstances of each case vary.
The broader enforcement landscape includes cases where DACA recipients have faced serious criminal charges. A DACA recipient in New York was recently charged in Molotov cocktail attacks on churches and businesses, a case that underscored the range of conduct among the program's beneficiaries and the enforcement pressures on DHS.
Several critical facts remain unclear. DHS has not publicly explained what specific violation it alleged against Villegas herself, as opposed to her husband, who officials said was in the country without permission. The arrest followed a vehicle collision with an unmarked federal vehicle, but whether any criminal charges resulted is not part of the available record.
The voluntary departure order raises its own questions. Villegas received the order in February with a March 19 deadline, yet she remained in DHS custody past that date and was deported six days later. Whether she could have meaningfully complied with a voluntary departure deadline while in government custody is a question her lawsuit implicitly raises.
Meanwhile, federal judges have pushed back on some Trump administration immigration enforcement actions in other contexts, and the administration has faced legal resistance on multiple fronts. How the Southern District of Texas handles this case could set a marker for whether DACA status functions as a genuine shield against removal or merely a revocable administrative convenience.
DHS has also drawn scrutiny for its treatment of illegal immigrants in the criminal justice system. The Justice Department recently opened a civil rights probe into a Virginia prosecutor over allegations of favorable plea deals for illegal immigrants, a case that reflects the broader tension between enforcement priorities and local discretion.
Villegas's case does not fit neatly into the usual categories. She is not accused of a violent crime. She held valid DACA status. She has three American children. And the government's own paperwork appears to use its own enforcement action as the justification for stripping her protections after the fact.
None of that means the government lacked authority to act. DHS maintains she accepted voluntary departure and waived her appeal. If that is true, the legal picture shifts. But even then, the decision to deport a woman with active DACA status, and then cite that deportation as "unauthorized travel" to revoke the status, raises questions about whether the process was designed to produce a fair outcome or simply to close a file.
Americans who support strong immigration enforcement, and there are good reasons to, still deserve a system that follows its own rules. When the government deports someone and then blames her for leaving, the process starts to look less like law and more like a trap.
