Alejandro Juarez showed up for what should have been a routine immigration check-in in Manhattan, and ended up in Mexico. The 39-year-old father of four, who had lived in the United States for over two decades and once worked at Donald Trump’s Westchester golf club, was mistakenly deported after being placed on the wrong flight by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.His case, now under review by the Department of Homeland Security, has exposed glaring procedural failures within America’s sprawling deportation apparatus, a system so overloaded that one administrative error can destroy a family’s life overnight.
A routine check-in that went south
Alejandro Juarez, 39, had lived in the United States since he crossed the southern border from Mexico at the age of 16. Over the next two decades, he built a life in Yorktown, Westchester County, New York, with his wife, Maria Priego, and their four children. His eldest son, aged 20, serves in the US Marines; all four children are American citizens. Juarez was detained on 15 September after reporting for what was meant to be a routine check-in at ICE’s Manhattan offices at 26 Federal Plaza. He had attended such appointments before without incident. This time, after officers reviewed his file, he was suddenly placed in custody while his wife waited outside in the car. According to The New York Times, Juarez was transferred to Delaney Hall, a detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. Four days later, ICE agents placed him on a bus to Newark Liberty International Airport, where he was meant to board a flight to a detention centre in Arizona. Internal ICE emails later reviewed by The Times show that instead, he was placed on the wrong flight, bound for Texas, near the US-Mexico border. When Juarez landed in Texas, officers unshackled him, handed him a small bag containing his phone, belt and documents, and instructed him to cross a bridge over the Rio Grande into Mexico. As he walked, he thought about his wife and children waiting in New York. A sign reading “Welcome” welcomed him back into the country he had left 22 years earlier.“And that’s how my journey in the United States ended,” Juarez said tearfully during a phone interview with The New York Times from Mexico.
ICE realises the error
Within hours of his forced removal, ICE officials in the United States began scrambling to locate him. Internal communications obtained by The New York Times reveal a flurry of confusion as agents realised Juarez had been placed on the wrong aircraft and erroneously expelled from the country. They began contacting detention centres and facilities across multiple states to determine his whereabouts. Under federal immigration law, most individuals facing deportation are entitled to a hearing before a judge — a step that Juarez was denied. ICE’s actions, according to legal experts quoted by The Times, likely violated federal procedure. At the time of Juarez’s scheduled immigration hearing on 25 September, his lawyer, Anibal Romero, appeared before the court. But Juarez was already in Mexico.“This is unprecedented in my 20 years of practice, an individual being removed without any hearing, leaving even the court and D.H.S. confused,” Romero told The New York Times. When Juarez phoned his lawyer from Mexico, Romero immediately informed the court and ICE representatives. He later told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that the mishap was “careless” but not malicious.“Right now I’m working with the Department of Homeland Security, and credit to them, this is the first time I’ve heard that they’ve acknowledged it’s a mistake,” Romero said on CNN. “They’re trying to bring him back. It’s very rare for them to say, we made a mistake. They normally just say, too bad he’s undocumented.” A DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed to The New York Times that ICE had contacted Juarez’s lawyer and was “making arrangements to fly him back to the United States.” She added that Juarez would remain in ICE detention until his immigration case is resolved.“The end result will be the same, he will not be able to remain in the U.S. and will be removed following the completion of his proceedings,” McLaughlin said in her statement to The Timesdescribing him as a “threat to the public” because of a previous driving offence.
A life upended and a family in limbo
Juarez’s accidental deportation has left his family struggling to cope. From their home in Westchester County, Maria Priego now works as a maid and the sole breadwinner for their three youngest children, aged 10, 12 and 16.“It’s been very hard because we depended a lot on my husband,” Priego told The New York Times. “We’re sad and devastated for what my husband has gone through, and waiting for any good news from our lawyer.” Since returning to Mexico, Juarez has been living in Puebla, more than 500 miles from the border, staying with his parents and helping his ageing father farm the family land. He spends his days calling his children.“My 10- and 12-year-old children ask me on the phone: ‘When are you returning, Papi? We miss you. We can’t be without you,’” he said. Juarez had worked for more than a decade at Trump National Golf Club Westchester, where he served as a server and food runner. He was dismissed in 2019, during Donald Trump’s first term, when several undocumented workers at Trump properties were terminated. His dismissal was previously documented by The Washington Post. In recent years, Juarez worked multiple jobs, as a hotel maintenance engineer and as head of landscaping and maintenance for two private residences in Westchester. His 2022 conviction for driving while intoxicated with a child in the car placed him on ICE’s radar, according to The Times. Although he was sentenced to three years of probation and avoided jail, ICE began requiring him to attend periodic check-ins. Until September, those had passed without issue; he said some ICE officers had even thanked him for attending and praised his English skills.
Broader pattern and legal fallout
Juarez’s case has revived concerns over the expanding deportation machinery and internal pressure at ICE. The Times reported that officials inside the agency had described being overstretched, with policies driven by senior White House adviser Stephen Miller, who had reportedly pushed for as many as 3,000 arrests per day.“People make mistakes, and I think that’s why this needs to stop. It’s becoming chaos,” Romero said on CNN. A similar incident occurred in March 2025, involving Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador. After judges reversed that “illegal” deportation, Garcia was returned to the United States, only to later face human trafficking charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty. According to The New York Timesa 2022 DHS civil rights office report had already warned of such errors, citing the case of another man deported to Guatemala before a final removal order had been issued. The report urged ICE to create a system for rectifying mistaken deportations. Former ICE chief counsel Kerry Doyle, who served during the Biden administration, told The Times that Juarez’s case was unsurprising given current conditions:“Because the volume of detentions is so high and people are really stretched thin in the work that they’re doing, it’s not shocking or surprising that this type of mistake could happen,” she said. For now, ICE says Juarez will remain detained once he is returned to the US, pending a new hearing. His lawyer, Romero, told both CNN and The Times that Juarez may qualify for “parole in place”, a special type of relief for immediate relatives of US military service members, a status tied to his eldest son’s role in the Marines. After two decades of sending money home to build his parents’ house in Puebla, Juarez now finds himself living there again — this time not by choice but by the force of a bureaucratic blunder.
