Oops - Looks Like a DREAMer May Have Been Deported

One of the many, and sometimes contradictory, statements President Trump has made on immigration is that so-called DREAMers, that is, illegals who were allegedly brought to the United States as children, would continue to be a protected class of deportable illegals. It seems that some members of the Border Patrol haven’t gotten the word.

Immigration officials have deported a man who is believed to be the first Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipient to be deported under President Donald Trump’s administration.

California resident Juan Manuel Montes, 23, was deported in February, according to his legal team at the National Immigration Law Center. He currently remains in Mexico awaiting further information on his status, and has filed a federal lawsuit as his deportation challenges continue.

Montes first arrived in the U.S. at the age of nine, and had been working in agriculture and studying welding at local community college when he was picked up by a Border Patrol agent in Calexico. Without identification on his person, Montes was deported to Mexico that night. He had been twice protected by the Obama-era DACA status, which was valid through 2018.

I suspect there is one helluva lot more to this story than meets the eye. Like, for instance, why was Montes stopped by the Border Patrol to begin with? The USA Today write up creates more questions.

After spending an evening with his girlfriend in Calexico, Calif., on Feb. 17, Juan Manuel Montes, 23, who has lived in the U.S. since age 9, grabbed a bite and was waiting for a ride when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer approached and started asking questions.

…

Montes had left his wallet in a friend’s car, so he couldn’t produce his ID or proof of his DACA status and was told by agents he couldn’t retrieve them. Within three hours, he was back in Mexico, becoming the first undocumented immigrant with active DACA status deported by the Trump administration’s stepped-up deportation policy.

I’ll cop to being old and out of touch but I know I never went on a date and “grabbed a bite” but was separated from my wallet. From the cash in my wallet? Yes. From my wallet? No. How did the Border Patrol ascertain that Montes was illegal without looking at identification? He was deported in February but the story is only filtering out now. Really? How very strange.

I’m really ambivalent about the whole DREAMer issue. I have sympathy for people who were brought here as children but the solution to their problem is not to create a permanent underclass who are not citizens or eligible for citizenship but who live here.

The post OOPS. It Looks Like A DREAMer May Have Been Deported appeared first on RedState.