ICE Detains DACA Recipient Father as DHS Says Status Offers No Deportation Shield

Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained 35‑year‑old DACA recipient Juan Chavez Velasco in Weslaco, Texas, as he drove to deliver breast milk to his premature newborn in a neonatal intensive care unit, leaving behind his U.S.-citizen wife and three U.S.-citizen children. Chavez Velasco, brought from Colombia at age 8, has held DACA since 2012, has no criminal record according to his wife, and works as a medical laboratory scientist who served in an ER during the Covid‑19 pandemic, but he has a 2005 final order of removal stemming from a denied family asylum claim. A DHS spokesperson, asked about the case, called him “an illegal alien,” stressed that “DACA does NOT confer any form of legal status” and that recipients are “not automatically protected from deportations,” and went further to say “being in detention is a choice,” urging DACA recipients to self‑deport in exchange for $2,600 and a free flight. The case highlights renewed fears among so‑called Dreamers and immigration lawyers that the administration is increasingly targeting people who once believed DACA gave them practical protection, even as many face long backlogs and renewal delays that can leave them without work authorization. Advocates are seizing on the DHS comments as evidence of a hard‑line posture toward DACA holders, while critics argue the agency is using a long‑stale removal order to justify breaking up a mixed‑status family whose members consider themselves, in the article’s words, “Americans at heart.”