The Trump administration is allowing a South Texas resident to return to the U.S. after immigration officials deported him earlier this year, despite being a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — an immigration status that protects immigrants from deportation.
José Contreras Diaz, 30, was arrested and quickly deported from the Rio Grande Valley.
to Honduras earlier this year while his wife was pregnant. His family had immigrated to the U.S. when he was 8.
He is currently in Honduras and is expected to return to the Rio Grande Valley later this week and reunite with his wife and his infant son. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately answer questions from The Texas Tribune about Contreras’ case.
According to MS Now,a cable news channel formerly known as MSNBC. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Contreras, who worked as pool technician, during a routine check-in appointment with immigration officials. His DACA was current at the time of his arrest, the report says.
Since returning to office, President Trump’s administration has cracked down on immigrants, including many DACA recipients.
From January 2025 to November 2025, at least 261 DACA recipients have been arrested — 75 of them in Texas. And between 86 and 174 DACA recipients have been deported, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (The agency gave different figures to two different Democratic members of Congress who requested the information).
Created by the Obama administration in 2012, the program allows qualifying young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children to receive renewable work permits and protection from deportation as long as they don’t commit any crimes.
The first Trump administration attempted to scrap the program before the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the move. Immigration officials in the current Trump administration have argued that DACA does not protect immigrants from deportation.
Contreras is not the first DACA recipient to be deported and allowed to return.
Last month in California, U.S. District Judge Dena M. Coggins ordered immigration officials to facilitate the return of 42-year-old Maria de Jesús Estrada Juárez, a mother and DACA recipient who was deported in February. Immigration agents arrested her during an appointment at an immigration office after she applied for her legal permanent residency.
Stacy Tolchin, who represents Contreras and Estrada, had written a letter to ICE, arguing that deporting Contreras was illegal because his DACA status was still valid at the time of his arrest, according to the MS Now report. Tolchin attached Coggins’ ruling in Estrada’s case, which said that deporting Estrada was a “flagrant violation” of DACA protections.
