Recent DACA arrests raise alarm among legal advocates

(NEW YORK) — Recent arrests involving migrants who were brought to the country as children are raising concerns among some immigrant rights and legal advocates that the Trump administration is disregarding protections provided by an Obama-era program.

An “Enforcement Tracker” organized by a coalition of immigrant rights advocacy organizations, called “Home is Here,” tallies up at least 18 cases where recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program have been deported or are at risk of being deported after being detained by immigration authorities since President Donald Trump took office.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, a spokesperson for United We Dream, a member of the coalition. “We know there are many more and that this administration is just really breaking the promise that the US government made to these people to protect them from deportation.”

ABC News got an exclusive look at the tracker, which the group plans to publicly release during a press conference with members of Congress on Thursday.

DACA, which began under President Barack Obama in 2012, provides deportation protections for people who were brought to the U.S. as children, allowing them to stay in the country and work legally on a two-year, renewable term. Recipients must pass a background check and submit biometric information to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Some of the people included on the organization’s list have no criminal records, according to their lawyers. Others do have criminal histories, ranging from traffic infractions to domestic abuse charges, but advocates say in many cases they do not rise to the level of excluding someone from the program, and did not previously prevent recipients from being protected by the program or from renewing their status.

“Illegal aliens who claim to be recipients of DACA are not automatically protected from deportations,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement. “DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country. Any illegal alien who is a DACA recipient may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons, including if they’ve committed a crime.

2016 charge cited in arrest of Texas dad

On Aug. 13, Paulo Gamez Lira, a resident of El Paso, Texas, was pulling into his mother’s driveway when he was suddenly surrounded by several federal agents.

In a video taken by a security camera at his mother’s driveway, obtained by ABC News, a federal agent can be heard asking Gamez Lira to turn off the engine and to not resist.

The agents “some masked and at least one armed with a handgun, approached the vehicle and roughly pulled Mr. Gamez Lira from the driver’s seat,” a filing in U.S. District Court in New Mexico stated. “Although Mr. Gamez Lira did not resist, the men injured Mr. Gamez Lira’s shoulder during the arrest.”

His children can be heard screaming and crying in the video.

When his wife, Alejandra, who asked that ABC News not use her last name, learned of his arrest, she said she didn’t believe it at first.

“I felt like my whole world stopped for a moment, and I didn’t know really what to do,” she told ABC News.

After his arrest, court records state Gamez Lira was transported to a Port of Entry in El Paso, Texas, for processing and transferred to an ICE facility despite telling the arresting agents that he is a DACA recipient.

Gamez Lira, according to court filings, was brought to the U.S. from Mexico as an infant and has lived nearly his entire life in the El Paso area. He applied for DACA shortly after it became available in 2012 and since then, has been able to the renew his grant of deferred action.

The DACA recipient has three children, including a 3-month old daughter who suffers from medical issues and spent the first month and a half of her life in the neonatal intensive care unit, according to his wife.

“There was no day that he wouldn’t be there with her and with me … It’s been pretty hard for all of us,” she said.

In 2016, court filings indicate Gamez Lira was charged with possession of marijuana but ultimately pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after the charges were reduced.

Gamez Lira’s attorneys said they have not located records of his conviction in that case. “Such a conviction, if it exists, is nearly ten years old. Together with four dismissed traffic citations on Mr. Gamez Lira’s record, this history presented no barrier to his DACA eligibility and repeated renewals,” the attorneys wrote.

In a statement, DHS confirmed Gamez Lira was arrested on Aug. 13, calling him a “criminal illegal alien, with a previous arrest for marijuana possession.”

Gamez Lira has been held at the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico since his arrest and is now facing removal proceedings.

DACA and crime: What the law says

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, someone is ineligible for DACA if they have been convicted of a felony, a “significant” misdemeanor or are “otherwise deemed to pose a threat to national security or public safety.” Applicants are also prohibited from traveling out of the country without authorization and they must continuously live in the U.S. since they submitted their most recent application.

Since applicants go through the renewal process every two years, immigration experts say that those with active status have already been screened by the government and given protection from deportation.

“If the person’s application revealed everything it was supposed to and they were granted DACA, you don’t get to second guess that conclusion later on because you want to,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). “You should only risk losing DACA if something new happens, if you have a new criminal conviction that was not revealed in your application or discovered in your application when it was granted.”

Attorney: Uber driver took wrong turn before arrest

Another case highlighted by advocates involves a Los Angeles Uber driver who was hired to drop off passengers near the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego on May 31 when he was detained by Border Patrol agents after making a wrong turn, according to his attorney.

The Uber driver, Erick Hernandez, missed an exit near the port of entry and was unable to take the following one because it was blocked by an accident, according to immigration attorney Valerie Sigamani.

“The next exit after that was Mexico,” Sigamani told ABC News.

Hernandez was taken into custody despite explaining to officers that he had accidentally entered into Mexico and is now being accused of attempting to re-enter the country illegally, Sigamani said.

Hernandez is facing a possible deportation to his home country of El Salvador, which he fled 20 years ago when he was 14, the attorney said.

Uber did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“In the past, when situations have happened like this, DHS has been amenable, they have been open to negotiation, they have been open to understanding and having mercy,” Sigamani said. “At the moment it’s extremely difficult to negotiate with DHS.”

The attorney said Hernandez has no criminal record that would disqualify him from the program.

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson identified Hernandez as an “illegal alien from Mexico” and said he “self-deported and then tried to illegally re-enter the U.S.” However, Sigamani said he’s from El Salvador.

In a statement written from detention, Hernandez said having DACA gave him a sense of pride and that he at one point considered joining the military to further give back to the U.S. However, since his arrest, Hernandez says he has felt discriminated against.

“You feel disappointed and sad because you’ve overcome so many things, and then they tell you goodbye,” Hernandez said in a statement written in Spanish. “It’s discrimination. We are more careful than U.S. citizens because they don’t have to fear losing DACA. We focus on working hard, studying, and staying out of problems. We want to get ahead in life.”

Arrest at a car wash during LA crackdown

Another case cited by advocates involves a man who worked at a car wash just outside Los Angeles, who was arrested in early June as President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles to clamp down on crime and illegal immigration.

Attorney Roxana Muro says it took Javier Diaz Santana a few moments to realize what was happening as agents descended at his workplace, because he’s deaf and communicates through sign language.

“He had just finished his lunch break and was on his way to go wash a car when, because he is deaf, he did not hear the commotion going on around him, employees running all over the place,” Muro said. “So when he did see the chaos, he started to run as well, but I don’t know that he entirely knew why he was running.”

Muro said Diaz-Santana was unable to communicate with officers that he had DACA and was detained.

Diaz-Santana, who has been in the country since he was about 5 years old, was quickly transported to a detention facility in Texas where he was held for over 20 days before being released on bond, Muro said.

During his time in detention, Muro said Diaz-Santana could not effectively communicate his status to ICE personnel. In 2013, Muro says DHS initiated removal proceedings against him because of a failed asylum application, but the court administratively closed the case since he had DACA. But now, she says the government has reopened that case in an attempt to deport him to Mexico.

In a statement, the DHS spokesperson said ICE staff provided Diaz Santana with a communications board and an American sign language interpreter.

“The facts are this individual is an illegal alien,” the spokesperson said. “This Administration is not going to ignore the rule of law.”