DACA Recipient Testifies That Her Wrongful Deportation Was ‘Abuse Of Power’ That ‘Traumatized’ Family
DACA recipients and loved ones told lawmakers during a Senate forum that the administration’s mass deportation agenda has left their families in “constant fear.”
Maria de Jesus Estrada Juárez – the DACA recipient who was wrongfully separated from her U.S. citizen daughter this past February despite holding valid deportation protections – testified during a Senate Judiciary Committee “spotlight forum” that her ordeal was no bureaucratic mistake. “It was an abuse of power that traumatized my family,” she said, “and showed how easily immigrant families can be treated as disposable.”
The mom was targeted, detained, and kicked out of a country she had called her home for 25 years just hours after attending what she thought was a routine immigration appointment related to her green card application. “For 40 days I was trapped in a country I do not call home while my daughter lived in fear wondering if she will ever see me again,” she testified during the May 12 forum.
Estrada Juárez was able to win her fight to the U.S. only after a federal judge ruled that she had been deported “in flagrant violation of the regulatory protections afforded to her under DACA” and “in violation of the Constitutional protections afforded to her under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “But while her family is now reunited, she told federal lawmakers that they are stuck in a state of unchanging anxiety.
“Now we live in fear. Constant fear,” Estrada Juárez said. “These are not just political talking points or policies on paper. These decisions to destroy families leaves permanent scars on children.”
Stephanie Villarreal testified on behalf of her husband, DACA recipient and essential healthcare worker Juan Chavez Velasco. He was detained for three months after ICE abducted him while he was on his way to deliver milk to their hospitalized newborn. “‘I never got to hold her’ before being taken away, he said in a phone interview from the Webb County Detention Center,” MS Now reported in March. He said he tried to tell ICE that he had DACA, they responded that it “doesn’t matter.”
Villarreal echoed his account during her testimony to senators, saying that Chavez Velasco tried to tell mass deportation agents that his protections were active and that he had already submitted renewal paperwork several months prior and was waiting for it to be approved. “They told him that it didn’t matter, and they took him,” she repeated. “I was on the phone with him and I heard it all happen.”
The dad’s DACA status ultimately expired while he was in detention. “He did everything he was asked to,” Villarreal continued. “He applied on time, he renewed successfully since 2012. That didn’t matter.”
In much-needed good news for the young family, Chavez Velasco finally got to hold his baby daughter after finally being released from ICE detention, the Families Belong Together campaign shared Monday:
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said during the spotlight forum that his office has heard from constituents who have also filed their DACA renewal paperwork ahead of time but, like Chavez Velasco, are “still losing their protections due to delayed adjudication.” Some applicants have been forced to wait for as long as six months – or even longer – to have their paperwork processed, leaving them at risk of losing their jobs and housing if their status expires and are then unable to legally work.
“As a result, the number of people with active DACA status has dropped by 32,000,” Senator Durbin said. “Additionally, USCIS is applying so-called ‘processing holds’ on applications from DACA recipients from 39 countries which the President said we will accept no one from. And there is no timeline for when processing will resume.”
The administration is also breaking DACA’s promise by issuing a decision that just disregards DACA period, and “sets a precedent that DACA status is no longer enough to automatically protect immigrants within removal proceedings, which can lead to deportation,” as Mission Local reported.
“Let’s be clear—the cruelty is the issue here,” Senator Durbin continued. “These are people who have lived in the U.S. for years, graduated alongside our kids, married and had their own U.S. citizen children, and are contributing to our communities.”
Rebecca Shi, founding executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, testified that ensuring DACA recipients can remain in their communities is essential to our continued wellbeing, noting that nearly 35,000 health care workers are enrolled in the program. She pointed to Florida patients who face interruption to their care because of renewal delays affecting a nursing supervisor.
“That means the patients that she sees every day, the nurses that she supervises every day, do not have her support and her cooperation, her mentorship, solely because she was born in Haiti,” Shi said. “She arrived in the US in 1999 at the age of 5 and was educated in American schools. She got her nursing degree here.”
“She has lived here for 27 years,” she continued. “She has met every requirement the government has asked of her, renewing her DACA on time, paying taxes, building a life defined by work, responsibility and community.”
The Center for American Progress estimated that in 2022, “more than 482,000 DACA recipients were in the workforce, collectively earning nearly $27.9 billion and contributing nearly $2.1 billion to Social Security and Medicare annually. In addition, their employers contributed more than $1.6 billion in payroll taxes toward Social Security and Medicare on these DACA recipients’ behalf.”
Greisa Martínez Rosas, executive director of immigrant youth-led United We Dream, used her time at the microphone to condemn the administration’s cut-by-cut attacks on DACA – and urge those with power to help end the suffering and uncertainty facing all Dreamers.
“Speaking here today is not just personal,” she said. “It’s my civic responsibility and part of the long legacy of immigrant youth who show up every single day to organize, advocate, and care for one another where systems have failed. As immigrant youth across the country endure a slate of coordinated attacks, Congress has no choice but to reckon with the truth: only full citizenship can afford communities the stability and dignity we deserve.”
“No longer can those in the highest halls of power treat immigration as a political liability when it has always been where the biggest issues of our time – from economic prosperity to labor stability – converge,” she continued.