GoKawiilMaría de Jesús Estrada Juárez came to the US from Mexico in 1998 at 15 years old. Later, she was a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the policy meant to protect undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as minors from deportation. When Estrada Juárez applied for a family-based green card in 2025, she thought she was doing everything right.
Instead, she was detained at her green card interview in Sacramento, California, and deported to Mexico. Similar stories have played out across the country since President Donald Trump retook office. Last year, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller and then Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem set a quota of 3,000 arrests per day, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has hired 12,000 new agents to supercharge the agency’s efforts.
But in practice, the emphasis on detaining and deporting as many people as possible has meant that even immigrants in the US with legal status have been caught up in the blitz, thrown into a system where they may be moved out of the state, or the country, before they’re able to seek legal help. Immigration officers have appeared at immigration court hearings and green card interviews across the country, arresting people who are otherwise complying with the immigration process.
On March 23, a federal judge ruled that Estrada Juárez’s deportation was unlawful, and she was able to return to the US on March 31. Estrada Juárez shared her experience with WIRED.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
WIRED: Can you tell me what the actual deportation process looked like for you? How fast did it happen?
María de Jesús Estrada Juárez: It happened pretty fast. I went to my appointment that I had for my green card, and I ended up being deported back to Mexico in less than 24 hours. It was very traumatic and very disturbing because I believed I was taking the right steps towards stability.
There wasn’t much information given to me. After I was detained, I was told I was going to Tijuana. I was detained in Sacramento, but they took me to different facilities on the way down to Mexico. So it was Sacramento, Stockton, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and the last one was San Ysidro. They were picking up different people on the way down.
We heard all this stuff, about how DACA recipients were a target to be deported, and that’s not the protection that we were promised.
Were you able to contact your family at all? Did they know where you were?
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