California woman returns home after the Trump administration deported her to Mexico

Maria de Jesús Estrada Juárez, a Sacramento resident who was deported to Mexico by President Donald Trump's administration before returning home, speaks at a news conference, in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Sophie Austin) 2026-04-01T04:21:23Z SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A California woman who had been living in the U.S. for 27 years before the Trump administration deported her to Mexico in February reunited with her daughter this week after a judge ordered her return.

Mexican citizen Maria de Jesús Estrada Juárez was among the hundreds of thousands of people shielded from deportation under an Obama-era program allowing people brought to the U.S. as children to stay in the country if they generally stay out of trouble.

But that changed Feb. 18 when she showed up for an immigration hearing and was arrested by U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deported the next day. “I didn’t get to say goodbye,” the 42-year-old mother said at a news conference Tuesday in Sacramento. “It all happened so fast.

This has been one of the most painful experiences of my life.” Estrada Juárez held hands with her daughter and began to choke up as she recounted those experiences. “It’s hard to describe what it feels like to lose your mother so suddenly, especially when you believed she was safe,” said Damaris Bello, Estrada Juárez’s 22-year-old daughter. “It was like grieving someone who was still alive.” The federal government has arrested several other recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, during President Donald Trump’s second term.

The events come amid the Trump administration’s reshaping of immigration policy more broadly.

Immigration advocates say Estrada Juárez’s removal highlights the need to offer more permanent protections for DACA recipients, often referred to as “Dreamers.” The case is a rare example of a judge ordering a person’s return to the United States after being deported, said Talia Inlender, deputy director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. “But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it feels like this is happening with more frequency under the current administration which is prioritizing speed and quotas, rather than fairness and process, in facilitating removals,” Inlender said in a statement.

The federal administration said Estrada Juárez was deported because of a 1998 removal order when Estrada Juárez was a teenager, shortly after she arrived

原文链接: AP News