HARLINGEN, Texas — Jose Contreras Diaz was heading home to Texas on Wednesday, months after being deported to Honduras by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in January. He came with the Trump administration’s assurance that he would be allowed to return to the U.S.

He thought he would be reunited with his family within hours. The reunion never came.

Contreras Diaz, a 30-year-old who entered the United States as a child and received protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, sent MS NOW a photo of himself smiling at the airport. “I’m on the runway waiting for the plane,” he texted. His last message: “Plane just got here. I gotta wait for everyone to get off then I’ll get on.”

But around 9:30 p.m., his attorney learned that immigration agents were transferring him to a detention facility. Lawyer Stacy Tolchin was first told he would be held at El Valle Detention Facility, then his detainee locator showed Port Isabel — almost an hour away.

“What are they doing, and what is the point of paroling somebody back on a chartered flight to detain them?” Tolchin said. “I’ve never had anybody brought back on a charter flight ever.”

Contreras Diaz is one of multiple “Dreamers” who have been arrested, detained or deported by the Trump administration. The Obama-era program known as DACA has long shielded from deportation hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. But the Trump administration contends that valid DACA status no longer protects a person from removal, and has publicly pressured Dreamers to self-deport.

Tolchin’s “biggest fear” is that ICE will hold Contreras Diaz until his active DACA status expires in June. “But his DACA shouldn’t run out, because he has a pending renewal,” she said. 

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that “DACA does NOT confer any form of legal status in this country.”

“The end result will be the same — he will not be able to remain in the U.S.,” the spokesperson said.

After this story published, Tolchin, Contreras Diaz’s lawyer, heard from an ICE agent who had been working on his parole. The agent said Contreras Diaz’s case is currently being reviewed.

When asked about DHS’s statement that Contreras Diaz “will not be able to remain in the U.S.,” Tolchin said, “as long as he has DACA, he cannot be removed.”

Tolchin said DHS HQ is attempting to scare people to leave the country. Despite that, she’s hopeful the review of his case mentioned by the agent could be a sign towards release.

It remains unclear why Contreras Diaz was transferred to a detention facility upon arriving back in the U.S., or why the administration brought him back at all after deporting him in January. He and his attorney were told he would be granted parole; in the days leading up to his flight, Contreras Diaz believed he would be released upon landing in Harlingen.

Tolchin had sent ICE a letter arguing that he was illegally deported, attaching a recent ruling by a federal judge in California ordering the return of Maria Estrada Juárez, another DACA recipient she represents. Within days, immigration agents notified Contreras Diaz that he would be allowed to return.

At the airport, his sisters Cindy Contreras and Emily Baharona waited anxiously, cradling the newborn son Contreras Diaz has yet to meet. Every few minutes, the two women would look up, straining to catch a glimpse of passengers arriving on the floor above. But one hour stretched into five, night fell, and their brother never walked through.

“I feel, once again, betrayed,” Cindy said through tears as she held her brother’s sleeping newborn in the airport’s arrivals atrium. “My brother’s not a bad person. He just deserves to see his baby.”

“I just want to get over this nightmare,” she added. “I miss him. We just want to be with him.”

The Trump administration has declined to say outright that it is ending the 14-year-old DACA program, instead targeting recipients for enforcement and detaining those with decades-old removal orders that their protected status was designed to shield against. Some lawyers and advocates have called the strategy “death by a thousand cuts.” Last week, the Board of Immigration Appeals — an administrative court under the Justice Department — issued a ruling making it easier to deport DACA recipients.

Cindy, a Dreamer herself, is terrified that she could be next. 

“We’re going to fight for my brother, and honestly, I don’t care how big it has to get or how much noise we have to make or what the consequences are,” she said moments after finding out they wouldn’t be able to take her brother home as planned. “I think people should see how heartbreaking this administration is. Honestly, it feels like humans are happy to see other humans suffering.”

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