After months stuck in Honduras and missing the birth of his son, 30-year-old South Texas resident José Contreras Díaz is back on U.S. soil, out of federal custody and finally reunited with his wife and newborn. Contreras had been deported in January after a routine immigration check-in ended with him in handcuffs, and his case has stirred fresh local anxiety over how far federal agents can go when it comes to people protected by DACA.
According to The Texas Tribune, federal officials arranged travel for Contreras to come back and granted him parole to re-enter the United States on April 29. But when his plane landed at Valley International Airport in Harlingen, immigration agents detained him again and transferred him to the Port Isabel detention center. His attorney, Stacy Tolchin, said she had already sent ICE a letter arguing that the earlier deportation was unlawful because his DACA renewal was still valid when he was taken into custody. Tolchin says ICE instead leaned on a long-standing family removal order that dated back to when Contreras was a child, a decision she and immigrant advocates argue crossed the line.
Local coverage from the San Antonio Current reports that federal officials released Contreras on May 7. He was freed near Brownsville and then reunited with relatives in Edinburg, where he held his infant son, Mateo, for the very first time. His family described an emotional homecoming. His mother had previously turned herself in to immigration agents at the Texas–Mexico border as part of the push to bring him back.
Advocates say none of this is happening in a vacuum. The Department of Homeland Security told lawmakers that from January through November 2025, ICE arrested at least 261 DACA recipients and removed between 86 and 174 of them, figures that have become a flashpoint in arguments over whether long-running DACA renewals should effectively block deportations, The Texas Tribune reports. Those numbers, combined with recent court rulings, are prompting lawyers to push for faster judicial review in similar cases.
Legal Fight And Precedent
Tolchin has signaled she plans to sue over Contreras’s detention and removal, arguing that someone with an active DACA renewal should not be deported in the first place. Her letter to ICE pointed to a recent federal court order that required immigration officials to bring back Maria de Jesús Estrada Juárez after a judge found her deportation to be a “flagrant violation” of DACA protections, a precedent that could bolster Contreras’s case, according to the San Antonio Current. How judges read that ruling, and how they weigh ICE’s shifting internal guidance, will have consequences for others with DACA status who are swept up in enforcement.
What Advocates Say
Immigrant-rights groups sharply criticized Contreras’s detention and are demanding clearer rules to prevent families from being split up in cases like his. In a statement, FWD.us called for his immediate release and argued that the case highlights the “arbitrary and harmful” fallout of the current enforcement system. Advocates also warn that slow processing times and shifting enforcement priorities leave DACA recipients exposed to repeated detentions and fresh rounds of family upheaval.
For Contreras and his relatives, his release brings an end to the most urgent phase of the ordeal. But his attorneys say the larger fight over how and why he was removed is just getting started, and DACA recipients across South Texas and beyond will be watching what happens in court very closely.
