Imagine working hard for over a decade, raising a family, only to be whisked away on the wrong plane and dumped across the border due to a government blunder.
This is the shocking story of Alejandro Juarez, a 39-year-old father of four, who was mistakenly deported to Mexico after a procedural error by U.S. immigration officers, leaving his American-born family behind in New York while highlighting serious flaws in ICE operations.
The Daily Mail reported that Juarez had been a dedicated employee at Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, for over ten years until 2019, when the Trump Organization dismissed undocumented workers amid public scrutiny over hiring practices.
After losing that job, he took on two roles in Yorktown—one at a hotel, another maintaining estates—to provide for his wife, María Priego, and their four children. It’s the kind of grit conservatives admire, even if we question the broader policies that allow such situations to fester.
In 2022, Juarez stumbled, pleading guilty to a misdemeanor DUI charge after driving with two of his kids in the car, earning three years’ probation.
ICE later labeled him a "public safety threat" over this incident, a designation that feels like a stretch to justify aggressive enforcement. Still, mistakes don’t erase a man’s right to due process, something conservatives and libertarians hold sacred against bureaucratic overreach.
Fast forward to September 15, when Juarez showed up for a routine check-in at ICE’s Manhattan office, only to be detained without warning. His wife waited in their car outside 26 Federal Plaza, clueless that her husband was being taken away.
Instead of transferring Juarez to a detention facility in Arizona as planned, immigration officers botched the logistics, putting him on a flight to Texas and forcing him to cross a bridge into Mexico.
He was unshackled, handed his belongings, and told to walk over—no hearing, no judge, just a bureaucratic shrug. This isn’t just sloppy; it’s a violation of standard procedure and, as federal officials admitted, likely against the law.
Department of Homeland Security officials later confessed Juarez was "removed to Mexico early" due to being placed on the wrong transport. Internal ICE emails, uncovered by The New York Times, reveal a frantic scramble to locate him after the error was realized.
Juarez’s deportation left María Priego to work double shifts as a maid in Westchester County to support their American-born children—ages 10, 12, 16, and a 20-year-old son serving in the U.S. Marine Corps.
“My 10- and 12-year-old children ask me on the phone, 'When are you returning, Papi?'” Juarez said, his words dripping with the pain of separation.
Juarez’s attorney, Aníbal Romero, was stunned, learning of the deportation five days later when Juarez called from Mexico saying, “I'm in Mexico.”
Even at a scheduled immigration hearing in New York, ICE’s own lawyer had no clue where Juarez was, exposing a level of incompetence that would be comical if it weren’t so devastating. This isn’t enforcement; it’s a circus.
Now stranded over 2,500 miles away in Puebla, Mexico, Juarez awaits ICE’s arrangement to return him to the U.S. for proper deportation proceedings.
It’s a small relief, but the damage is done—time lost with family can’t be reclaimed. The question remains: how many more families will suffer before ICE gets its house in order?
This isn’t an isolated incident; ICE has a track record of similar blunders, like mistakenly sending Kilmar Armando Abrego García to an El Salvadoran prison earlier this year, or deporting another man to Guatemala without a final removal order in 2022. The DHS civil-rights office has pushed for a process to fix wrongful deportations, yet advocates note little progress.
For an agency under pressure to speed up removals, as pushed by the Trump administration, these errors suggest haste trumps precision—hardly a conservative value.