At about 8:40 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 13, in Horizon City, three unmarked vehicles blocked Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira’s car and seven plainclothes men – some masked and armed – pulled him from the driver’s seat, court documents show. The men didn’t identify themselves or produce any kind of warrant.
Gamez Lira, a 28-year-old forklift operator and DACA recipient, is now in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is being held at the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, New Mexico. He’s facing removal procedures.
It was 4 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 3, when Catalina “Xochitl” Santiago, 28, also a DACA recipient, was approached by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at El Paso International Airport. Agents, who didn’t have a warrant, detained her minutes before she was to board a plane to Dallas on her way to a conference. She was transferred to the ICE El Paso Service Processing Center on Montana Avenue, where she remains to this day.
This week, both filed petitions in federal court challenging the legality of their detention and asking to be released from ICE custody.
The ACLU of New Mexico filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of Gamez Lira in U.S. District Court in New Mexico on Wednesday; while the National Immigration Project filed a petition on behalf of Santiago in the Western District of Texas, El Paso Division.
“Barely three weeks had passed since our baby finally left the hospital and we were enjoying our new life as a family, when ICE unjustly took him away,” Gamez Lira’s wife is quoted as saying in the petition, which notes that the baby has serious medical conditions. “In that instant, they destroyed our family. I demand justice. I demand my husband’s freedom. And I demand that they stop destroying families.”
The petitions claim detention of a person with a valid Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals grant violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection of liberty, citing violation of due process, detention without reasonable cause, and violation of administrative procedure.
ICE El Paso officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
DHS Assistant Press Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement to various news outlets, has said that DACA recipients are not “automatically protected from deportations” and that it does not “confer any form of legal status in this country.” She urged recipients to self-deport.
A group of 41 Democratic and independent U.S. senators challenged that interpretation in a letter Wednesday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, saying it defied the agency’s longstanding legal guidance that says that DACA holders are “not considered to be unlawfully present” in the United States.”
DACA provides work authorization and temporary protection from deportation for individuals who were brought to the United States as children. The program was implemented by the Department of Homeland Security in 2012 under former President Barack Obama and remains in effect. Under the administration of President Donald Trump, DACA recipients can apply to renew their status and work authorization, but new applications are no longer being processed.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reports nearly 538,000 active DACA recipients in the country as of Sept. 30, 2024 – nearly 90,000 of them in Texas.
Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira
Gamez Lira, who was brought as an infant to the United States from Mexico by his parents, received DACA about 2014 and has been granted renewals since – most recently from August 2024 to August 2026.
“He’s an honorable, responsible man, and he’s never been in trouble because he’s always dedicated himself to following the law and renewing his DACA,” his wife said in the petition. “Keeping him detained is a mistake.”
The couple has a 3-month-old baby and a 3-year-old child. Both of the children were in the car at the time of his detention. Gamez Lira, a forklift driver, also has two other U.S.-born children from a previous relationship.
The charging document for Gamez Lira’s removal proceedings refer to him as an “arrivating alien,” which by regulation means immigration judges lack jurisdiction to redetermine his custody through a bond hearing.
In a court hearing in Otero Wednesday, immigration Judge Brock Taylor ordered the government to change the charging document – also known as the notice to appear – to remove the “arriving alien” language, said Jorge Dominguez, an attorney with Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which is representing Gamez Lira in his immigration proceedings.
It’s unclear when the notice to appear might be amended, Dominguez said. Gamez Lira has an immigration hearing in Otero on Monday, Sept. 15.
“His fear was that he was going to have to wait months for another hearing, so there was a sense of some relief, ” Dominguez told El Paso Matters. “But overall, there is, like a huge sense of desperation, a huge sense of just being powerless. You know, he’s been here his entire life. This is all he knows.”
Since being detained, immigration officials have repeatedly encouraged Gamez Lira to agree to voluntarily self-deport, according to court documents.
Gamez Lira’s family shared security camera footage of the arrest with Channel 26 KINT, which shows the children screaming and his mother running out of the house to get the children out of the car. His sister, who narrates the incident, said they’re regarding the arrest as a “kidnapping” because the men didn’t have identification or an arrest warrant. In the news report, she said her mom asked why they were taking Gamez Lira. One of the men responded, “porque no tiene papeles,” or because he doesn’t have papers, and ignored her telling them that he’s a DACA recipient.
Dominguez said that it remains unclear who actually approached Gamez Lira because the men never identified themselves. He said that it could have been contractors under ICE or DHS, whom he referred to as “bounty hunters.”
Catalina “Xochitl” Santiago
Pointing to Santiago’s case, Dominguez said he wouldn’t be surprised to see more arrests of DACA recipients.
“We’ll have to be on the look out to see how much this takes place now,” Dominguez said. “Perhaps we’ll see if this kind of is the next group being targeted.”
An indigenous Zapotec woman, Santiago has lived in the United States since she was 8 years old and obtained DACA protection in 20212, which is valid through April 2026, according to the petition.
Santiago would work with her parents picking okra, beans, tomatoes, pumpkin, and other crops after school and in the summers, the petition states, and in high school got involved in nonprofits supporting local workers and taught Spanish classes to indigenous farmworkers in the area.
The arrest of Santiago, who has lived in El Paso for several years and is married to Desiree Miller, a U.S. citizen, sparked protests rallying for her release. At the same time, her criminal record came into question.
About 10 years ago, she pled guilty for disorderly conduct for her participation “in a civil disobedience action,” the petition states. She had similar charges in 2017 but neither resulted in a conviction. She was arrested for alleged drug and paraphernalia possession in 2020 while traveling through Arizona, but charges were never filed.
In her notice to appear, DHS alleges that Santiago is in the United States “without being admitted or paroled.”
Santiago’s detainment sparked various fundraisers, including a now-closed GoFundMe, as well as calls to action and petitions demanding her release.
The post 2 El Paso County DACA recipients challenge ICE detention as families plead for justice appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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