Agents claim they were only carrying out orders when ICE unintentionally deported a former Trump golf course employee. Alejandro Juarez, 39, said that after being held in New York City, he was never allowed to challenge his deportation before an immigration judge. He had to cross a bridge across the Rio Grande to Mexico after being placed aboard a plane bound for Texas.
Juarez told The New York Times, “And that’s how my journey in the United States ended,” after working for over ten years at a golf course run by the Trump Organization in New York.
Later, immigration and customs enforcement officials discovered that they had placed Juarez on the incorrect aircraft rather than transporting him to an Arizona prison facility. The Times claims that their actions might have been against federal immigration regulations, which grant most deported individuals a court hearing, something Juarez was never granted.
To find Juarez, ICE agents emailed and called correctional centers in an effort to ascertain his location. How many other immigrants were unjustly jailed like Juarez because ICE did not previously keep track of such situations is unknown.
ICE mistakenly deported a man who worked at Trump’s golf course for more than a decade.
“And that’s how my journey in the United States ended” he said through tears during a phone interview from Mexico.https://t.co/6rr5xdjxuH pic.twitter.com/AiuFNPBQy8
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) October 30, 2025
According to the portal, Juarez’s situation illustrates the agency’s increasing stress in the wake of President Donald Trump‘s growing demand to expedite the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Critics are worried that Juarez’s case flaws hint at faults that may happen more often as detentions increase.
The Department of Homeland Security falsely informed the publication that Juarez had not been deported, stating that his detention stemmed from a conviction in 2022 for driving while intoxicated while carrying a child. In a later statement, the agency admitted that Juarez had been “removed to Mexico early because he was put on the incorrect transport.”
In another instance in 2022, a man was deported to Guatemala without a final removal order, and the DHS civil rights office looked into the matter. The office recommended that ICE create a method to allow those who were wrongfully expelled to rectify their expulsion.
“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,” said Kerry Doyle, a top ICE lawyer during the Biden administration.
After being summoned to a meeting with ICE authorities in Lower Manhattan, Juarez was taken into custody on September 15. Numerous migrants who showed up for regular check-ins have been jailed since Trump took office in the White House. But at the time of his hearing on September 25, Juarez was out of the United States, even though he was supposed to have a scheduled hearing before a judge to present his case.
“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,” said Juarez’s attorney, Anibal Romero.
Even though Juarez was able to move back to his parents’ house in Puebla, he still worries a lot about his wife, Maria Priego, and their four kids, who are ages 20, 16, 10, and 12. “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.
At the age of 16, Juarez crossed the border between the United States and Mexico in 2002, and despite not having any documentation, he soon made his home in New York. He met his wife and picked up English. During Trump’s first term in 2019, he and other undocumented workers were sacked from their jobs as a food runner and server at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester.
