The lawsuit turns on a narrow but consequential question: whether the government can remove a DACA recipient and then use that trip abroad as grounds to end her protection.
Jessica Treviño Villegas, a 34-year-old Texas DACA mother of three, says ICE deported her to Mexico in March despite legal permission to stay in the United States through April 2027. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, she seeks her return to the United States after the federal government cited “unauthorized travel” and moved to end her DACA protection, according to the filing reported July 31, 2026.
The case involves DACA protections and immigration enforcement, but it is also a family separation fight. Villegas’ lawyers say the government created the very travel problem it is now using against her; DHS says she accepted voluntary departure and waived appeal.
The core dispute is timing
Villegas’ lawsuit centers on a sequence that her attorneys say should not have happened: she had active Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals protection, was removed to Mexico, and then received notice that her time outside the country could be used to terminate that protection.
Her legal team says her DACA status remained valid through April 2027. On that basis, they argue she could not be lawfully removed while the protection was still in effect.
The government’s account is different. DHS officials said Villegas “knowingly accepted voluntary departure and waived appeal,” according to the report. The agency also said she left the U.S. on March 25, 2026, and “will NOT return.”
That disagreement puts the court in the position of sorting out whether March 25 was an unlawful deportation of a protected DACA recipient or the execution of a departure process the government considers legally binding.
Why “unauthorized travel” matters
The phrase at the heart of the lawsuit is “unauthorized travel.” According to Villegas’ filing, DHS sent her a notice seeking to terminate her DACA status because she had “engaged in unauthorized travel” outside the United States on or about March 25.
That is the same date the lawsuit says she was deported to Mexico. Villegas’ attorneys argue the government cannot remove her and then treat the removal as though she had chosen to travel abroad without permission.
For DACA recipients, travel outside the United States can carry serious consequences if it is not authorized. Villegas’ lawyers are not simply challenging a technical label; they are arguing that the government is using its own enforcement action as the basis for ending her protection.
DHS has not accepted that framing. Its position, as described in the report, relies on the voluntary departure order and the claim that Villegas waived appeal.
What Villegas wants now
The lawsuit names DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons as defendants, according to the report. Villegas’ legal team is asking the court to declare her removal unlawful and order the government to facilitate her return to Texas.
Attorney David Rozas said in a statement that her DACA “remains valid through April 2027” and that the government had “no lawful basis” to remove her.
The request is not limited to a future review of her status. Her lawyers want immediate return, which would require the court to address the practical result of the removal, not only the paperwork behind it.
Villegas described the case in personal terms. She said she renewed DACA, followed the rules and believed the country would “do right” by her and her family. “Instead, I was taken from my children,” she said in a statement released Thursday.
A family case with legal stakes
Villegas had lived in Alamo, Texas, after coming to the United States from Mexico when she was 7, according to the lawsuit described in Newsweek. She later received DACA protection at age 20.
Her three children are U.S. citizens, according to the filing, and were set to return to school the next month. That detail gives the legal fight an immediate human consequence: whether their mother can return while the court reviews what happened.
DACA does not grant permanent legal status or create a path to citizenship by itself. It can allow eligible immigrants who came to the United States as children to remain temporarily and work if they meet program requirements and keep renewing their protection.
That limited nature is part of the wider tension. Immigration advocates point to cases like Villegas’ as evidence that even current DACA recipients can be vulnerable. Supporters of stricter enforcement generally emphasize that DACA is not legal status and does not erase other immigration issues.
The government cites December
DHS officials said Villegas and her husband were arrested in late December after a collision involving the couple’s vehicle and an unmarked Homeland Security Investigations vehicle in South Texas. Officials also said her husband had been in the country without permission when they were arrested.
Villegas was detained and placed into removal proceedings, according to the lawsuit. In February, she received an order of voluntary departure “under safeguards,” with a deadline of March 19 to leave the United States, the lawsuit states.
She remained in DHS custody before being deported to Mexico on March 25. Those facts may matter because voluntary departure can carry legal consequences, and the government is relying on that process in its account of the case.
Villegas’ side is not denying that the departure paperwork existed. Her attorneys argue that the government could not use that process to remove someone whose DACA protection had not expired.
Broader implications for DACA recipients
According to a DHS letter cited in the report, 86 DACA recipients had been deported during the current Trump administration, while 241 others had been arrested. Villegas’ case now adds a specific question to that broader enforcement picture: what happens when active DACA protection, custody and departure orders collide?
Tania Chavez, executive director of La Unión del Pueblo Entero, said Villegas did not willingly leave the country and accused the government of trying to take away protections after causing the removal.
What remains unclear is how DHS will defend the unauthorized-travel notice in detail, and whether the agency will argue that the voluntary departure order changed the legal effect of Villegas’ DACA protection.
The immediate issue for the court is whether to order the government to bring Villegas back while her challenge proceeds. For her family, the stakes are return to Texas or continued separation in Mexico. For other DACA recipients, the case may become a warning about how temporary protection can be tested when enforcement actions move faster than the legal questions around them.
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