Demonstrators hold signs from a bridge over a freeway during a protest organized by FIEL in response to the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis, in Houston, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle
The Trump administration deported a Houston woman to Nicaragua while she was trying to reopen her immigration case as a survivor of domestic abuse. In a rare move, a federal judge in Houston has ordered the government to return her to the U.S.
Marcela Linda Arias, who had lived in Houston for nearly 15 years, had been held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in Houston and was deported in late June. Before her removal, Arias had filed a motion to reopen her case in immigration court, which was supposed to trigger an automatic pause on her removal from the U.S., said her attorney, Jaime Rivera.
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At a court hearing this week about the case, a lawyer for the government denied that Arias was unlawfully removed from the country. But U.S. District Judge David Hittner ruled Arias would suffer irreparable harm if she wasn’t returned to the U.S.
Rivera said ICE was aware of the pending motion in Arias’ immigration case and that she shouldn’t have been deported, but the agency ignored the statute
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“They knew and they chose to remove her anyway,” he said.
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It’s unclear how many deported immigrants have been ordered returned to the U.S. ICE does not keep statistics on returns and only a handful of cases have garnered national attention. Arias’ case is now one of the few that have surfaced publicly during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Others include the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran who was deported despite having active protection against his removal. Abrego Garcia was jailed at El Salvador’s notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT. He was later returned after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Another Salvadoran man, Jordin Alexander Melgar-Salmeron, was ordered returned after a panel of 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals judges ruled his deportation was “improper,” ABC News reported in 2025. Abrego Garcia and Melgar-Salmeron were part of a group of four that had been ordered to return, the outlet reported.
Rivera said Arias’ case is just as egregious because ICE officials ignored provisions that should have barred his client’s removal.
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“It’s somebody who was covered under a protection of a statutory protection, and they were sent back in violation of the law,” he said.
The motion to reopen Arias’ case was granted a day after she was deported; her case is now pending in immigration court.
Hittner ordered Arias’ return Tuesday after he granted a motion for a temporary restraining order. His order stated that Arias was likely to prevail on the merits of her case, and that she would face a substantial threat of irreparable harm if the restraining order was not granted.
Hittner also instructed the Department of Homeland Security to provide the court with an update by Friday on what steps the government has taken to ensure Arias’ return before her next immigration court hearing on September 15.
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A Justice Department lawyer, Nicholas Sabin, insisted Arias was lawfully deported. He argued that her motion to reopen the case was not valid because a separate, unrelated motion she filed years ago was denied.
Rivera said that the time for the government to make that argument had passed.
“DHS failed to respond within the 10 days (allowed) and then they failed again to file an appeal on that motion,” he said.
The ICE office in Houston did not comment on the judge’s ruling.
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