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McALLEN, Texas — <\/span>A Texas mother deported to Mexico despite having legal permission to stay in the U.S. after arriving as a child has filed a lawsuit against the federal government after it notified her it would be terminating her permission because of \u201cunauthorized travel\u201d stemming from her deportation. <\/p>\n Jessica Trevi\u00f1o, 34, filed a lawsuit through her attorney this week asking a federal judge to intervene.<\/p>\n Trevi\u00f1o and her husband were arrested in December after federal agents followed them into a Home Depot parking lot in South Texas. Both were deported and are living in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas. Their three children, all U.S. citizens, are living with family on the U.S. side near the border.<\/p>\n After being brought to the country as a child at the age of 7, Trevi\u00f1o subsequently received legal permission at 20 to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Introduced in 2012, DACA does not confer legal status but has allowed hundreds of thousands of people who had come to the U.S. as children to temporarily remain and obtain work permits.<\/p>\n As a DACA recipient, she must maintain a clean criminal record and is not allowed to travel outside the United States. <\/p>\n Her attorney, David Rozas, filed the lawsuit. He noted her status and work permit were most recently authorized until April 2027.<\/p>\n Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sent her a notice of intent to terminate her status for \u201cunauthorized travel outside of the United States on or about March 25, 2026,” the same day she was deported from the country by the Department of Homeland Security. <\/p>\n DHS did not respond to a request for comment as of Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n Rozas filed a petition asking a federal judge in Brownsville to declare the woman’s expulsion was unlawful, order the government to facilitate Trevi\u00f1o’s return to the U.S. and allow her DACA status to remain valid. <\/p>\n \u201cThe government had no lawful basis to remove her, and we filed this petition to demand she be brought back home,\u201d her attorney added.<\/p>\n An immigration judge under the Justice Department had issued a voluntary departure order for Trevi\u00f1o in February while she was in ICE custody, but a valid DACA status prevents the Department of Homeland Security from deporting her. <\/p>\n \u201cI would be so blessed to be able to go back home, because that\u2019s what I long for most right now. I\u2019m really desperate. It\u2019s been seven months since I\u2019ve been home,\u201d Trevi\u00f1o said Thursday. Her three children are set to start school next month and their mother said she would like to be there. <\/p>\n The current Trump administration has deported 86 DACA recipients and arrested 241 others, according to a DHS letter sent in February to Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois. <\/p>\n Advocates for DACA recipients say Trevi\u00f1o’s deportation is part of a pattern. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is what a deliberate, systematic effort to destroy DACA looks like in practice: target recipients one by one, manufacture justifications after the fact, and leave their children to grow up without them,\u201d said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a policy organization defending immigration rights.<\/p>\n ____<\/p>\n This story has been revised to correct that Trevi\u00f1o arrived in U.S. at age 7, not 8, later receiving DACA status at 20 years old.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n