Evenezer Cortez Martinez wanted to pay respects to a beloved grandfather who died last fall.
He ended up deported, sent back to Mexico, a country the 39-year-old Kansas husband and father left at the age of 4.
“Everything was approved, and I arrived here with no problem,” said Cortez Martinez, a DACA recipient, in a phone interview from Cuernavaca, a city south of Mexico City.
On March 23, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials stopped Cortez Martinez at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport as he presented documents to board a flight back to Kansas City.
He was held, questioned and put on a flight to Mexico City that evening.
“I asked them, ‘Can I just call my lawyer and try to see if I can work things out,’” Cortez Martinez said. “They said, ‘No, you don’t have that option.’”
His attorney argues otherwise, filing a case Wednesday, April 2, with a Texas federal court.
“How many others are out there that this has also happened to, but who didn’t have the ability to get counsel?” said Rekha Sharma-Crawford, the Kansas City-based attorney who filed the case in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas. “The law is on his side.”
Potential test case
The case could become a test of the limits of the Trump administration’s reach.
Advocates argue the administration’s zeal to deport is increasingly overstepping, scooping up immigrants, even those legally present, and not allowing due process.
The lawsuit seeks “declaratory, injunctive and mandamus relief to find that Defendants actions were arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”
It’s filed against the U.S. Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and other government officials.
U.S. Immigration officials do not generally comment on specific cases.
But in a statement released to NPR recently, Customs and Border Protection argued it was merely enforcing the law.
“Those who violate these laws will be processed, detained, and removed as required,” CBP Assistant Commissioner Hilton Beckham said in the statement.
Customs agents in Dallas told Cortez Martinez that he had been ordered removed in absentia on June 11, 2024, and that his documents to travel had been issued in error.
Cortez Martinez said he had never been notified of a removal order, which is the legal term for what most people colloquially refer to as deportation.
The Roeland Park, Kansas, resident is staying with the one Mexico relative he knows, an uncle.
Cortez Martinez is believed to be the first Kansas City-area case of a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient caught in the Trump administration’s vow to deport millions of people. The latest Trump plan is called Operation Take Back America.
The lawsuit argues that Cortez Martinez has the right to appear before an immigration judge.
“Under current regulations, a holder of an Advance Parole document cannot be barred from the country (removed) without a formal removal hearing before an Immigration Judge,” the suit states.
Advance parole is the process Cortez Martinez went through, with the aid of an attorney, to travel outside of the U.S. as a DACA recipient.
His recurring two-year renewals of DACA had been approved by the government like clockwork. His current DACA is valid until October 2026.
DACA was designed by the Obama administration in 2012. It was meant to be a carveout for immigrants known as “Dreamers,” those who’d been brought to the U.S. as young children, without legal status.
DACA is a temporary reprieve from deportation. It also allows for work authorization and for people to apply for travel outside of the country, through advance parole.
The removal order the government cited is from June 2024.
“He’s not hiding, Sharma-Crawford said. “He’s doing everything that he’s supposed to be doing.”
Cortez Martinez has lived in the Kansas City area for nearly 20 years.
His wife, child and stepchildren are anxiously waiting for his return to their suburban home.
Rising immigrant fears of being deported
Cortez Martinez’s case is the first deportation of a Kansas City-area DACA recipient that Nubia Estefes is aware of occurring.
“It’s one of our fears,” said Estefes, executive director of the Kansas Missouri Dream Alliance, an advocacy group for “Dreamers.”
Before Trump took office, a few other area DACA recipients traveled back to their birth nations on the same documents that Cortez Martinez used, advance parole.
The trips were taken with counsel by attorneys, to ensure that nothing could be resurrected in their history as a rationale for deportation, Estefes said.
“It’s personal discretion on the part of the officers,” she said of the scrutiny that occurs at Customs.
News stories that even documented people have been deported are alarming the immigrant community.
“We’re definitely siding with the cautious side,” Estefes said. “If you don’t have to go, if it’s not life or death, I would suggest you wait it out.”
El Centro, a Kansas social service agency, is also advising immigrants to be careful.
Justin Gust, vice president of community engagement, said the agency is continuing the help with DACA renewal applications.
But even immigrants who are legal permanent residents are being advised to take precautions, especially when traveling.
“It just seems like everything is unknown these days,” Gust said. “What was a protected status, or a protected issue, is no longer protected.”
People are disabling face recognition or a thumbprint to open their cellphone, as a safeguard against having their data combed for anything a customs agent might deem offensive to the Trump administration’s goals.
“We’re advising people that they really do need to talk to their lawyer first and don’t go just to go, because you definitely need to know that you can come back,” Gust said.
A beloved grandfather, hazy memory of Mexico
Cortez Martinez’s sole memory of his native Mexico is a limited one, possibly bolstered more by family stories than a true memory.
But his grandfather is central.
Cornelio Martinez Dominguez owned a panaderia, a bakery.
“I’ve been told that every time the bread was ready, I’d run to my grandpa,” Cortez Martinez said.
Through the years, he spoke with his grandfather by phone. But he’d never returned to Mexico.
Sharma-Crawford first contacted the CBP Watch Commander at the Dallas Fort Worth airport, seeing if the office would intervene.
She did not receive a reply.
“There are real questions if he was properly notified,” she said of Martinez’s order of removal.
Still, the existence of the order wouldn’t negate his right to be granted advance parole, she said.
Sharma-Crawford suspects that the Trump administration has begun re-calendaring removal cases that had previously been closed.
“I never got any notice,” Cortez Martinez said of the removal order. “I never got any citations to go see a judge.”
Cortez Martinez received the approval to travel from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in early March. The document is valid until April 14, 2025, according to the lawsuit.
Still, he had been initially hesitant to take the trip.
He only considered doing so, as his grandfather’s health worsened.
In November, his grandfather died before the paperwork was approved.
The visit was shortened to a three-day excursion, just enough time to reach the cemetery a few hours outside of Mexico City, and then return to Kansas City.
“That’s the grandpa I wanted to be able to say goodbye to,” Cortez Martinez said.
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
