A 30-year-old South Texas man was freed by federal officials Thursday after being deported earlier this year, and returned to the United States, only to be detained once again.

Before he was deported, José Contreras Díaz — whose mother raised him in the Rio Grande Valley — lived in Edinburg as a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. If approved by federal officials, DACA recipients get protection from deportation and two-year-renewable work permits as long as they keep a clean criminal record.

In a statement on Thursday, Contreras, who was most recently detained for about a week, said he is ready to move forward with his life and rejoin his 2-month-old son and wife in the Rio Grande Valley.

“I would not wish what I’ve been through on anyone. They detained me, sent me to a country I barely remember,” Contreras said. They “gave me hope — the hope that I could come home, see my family, and hold my son again. Then that hope was taken away.”

In December, Contreras received an appointment notice to an immigration office for the following month to discuss his case, he said. At the immigration office, agents arrested and deported him weeks before his son was born in late February. He said agents told him he had a deportation order since he was 8 years old.

In an interview, Contreras said that when his mother brought him and his sisters to Texas, she had turned herself in to an immigration agent at the Texas-Mexico border. She and her family were released but missed an immigration court appointment, which led to her and her children’s deportation order.

After he was deported to Honduras, he contacted Stacy Tolchin, an immigration attorney. Tolchin sued the Trump administration, which led to a federal judge’s order to return 42-year-old Maria de Jesús Estrada Juárez, another DACA recipient, to the U.S. after being arrested at an immigration appointment and later deported.

In Contreras’ case, Tolchin wrote a letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing that deporting Contreras was illegal because his DACA status was still valid at the time of his arrest. Tolchin included in the letter the judge's ruling in Estrada’s case, which said that deporting her was a “flagrant violation” of DACA protections.

Immigration officials notified his lawyer that they would facilitate his return. But as soon as he landed in Harlingen on April 29, immigration agents arrested him and held him in custody at the Port Isabel Detention Center.

Previously, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, of DHS, had said the Trump administration does not recognize DACA as a “form of legal status in this country.” In the statement, DHS also said immigration agents could still deport Contreras.

“The end result will be the same — he will not be able to remain in the U.S.,” the statement released last week said. “The fact of the matter is those who are in our country illegally have a choice — they can leave the country voluntarily or be arrested and deported.”

Since returning to office, President Trump’s administration has cracked down on immigrants, including many DACA recipients.

From January 2025 to November 2025, at least 261 DACA recipients have been arrested — 75 of them in Texas. And between 86 and 174 DACA recipients have been deported, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (The agency gave different figures to two different Democratic members of Congress who requested the information).

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.