Trump's First DACA Deportee Arrested for Trying to Come Home

A young immigrant believed to be the first DACA recipient to be deported President Donald Trump earlier this year was arrested this week after re-entering the United States near the California border city of Calexico.

In a press release issued late Wednesday, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said that Juan Manuel Montes-Bojorquez, 23, had been arrested late Monday evening just outside Calexico, after having been spotted by Remote Video Surveillance Systems operators.

“Our agents witnessed and arrested Mr. Bojorquez making an illegal entry into the United States for the second time this year,” Assistant Chief Patrol Agent David S. Kim explained in a statement. “Border Patrol Agents will always stop, detain, and arrest anyone making an illegal entry into the country irrespective of their immigration or citizenship status.”

Bojorquez was deported in February of this year, after being detained by CBP agents who reportedly refused to allow him to provide documentation to corroborate his insistence that he was shielded according to his DACA status. Bojorquez’s arrest and deportation came nearly eight months before President Trump announced plans to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program entirely. At the time, a CBP spokesman also told Splinter that:

His DACA status expired in Aug. 2015 and he was notified at that time. According to our records, his DACA status was not renewed.

The CBP’s statement was seemingly disproven by a work-authorization card provided to USA Today by Bojorquez’s attorney, which shows he was supposed to have been protected due to his DACA status through 2018.

Bojorquez was deported to Mexico almost immediately after his arrest. He was then detained one day later attempting to re-enter the U.S, and sent back to Mexico once again. However, Department of Homeland Security officials claimed to CBS News that they had no record of his initial deportation, and insisted he had first left the U.S. voluntarily, thereby forfeiting his DACA protections and opening him up for his subsequent expulsion.

According to Bojorquez’s attorneys Bojorquez suffers from a cognitive disability. Until this year, he had lived in the United States since he was nine years old.