EL PASO — In early August, Catalina “Xochitl” Santiago had arrived at the local airport to catch a flight to Austin. But after passing through the security checkpoint, two Border Patrol agents approached Santiago, a 28-year-old immigrant from Mexico, asked for her identification and questioned how she obtained a work authorization card.
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Santiago, who came to the U.S. at 8 and is legally in the U.S. through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, insisted on having a lawyer present, according to a cell phone video she recorded that was later publicly released.
The agents told her to follow them to a room and turn off her phone.
Since that Aug. 3 airport confrontation, Santiago has been held in a detention center as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement works to deport her. Since her arrest, there have been demonstrations in Phoenix, El Paso, Chicago and Boston — places where she has worked with immigrant rights organizations — demanding that ICE release her.
An immigration judge ruled last week that Santiago can’t be deported because she has permission to live in the U.S. through DACA, an Obama administration program that has given many undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children work permits and temporary protection from deportation.
“This decision is a victory, but the fight is not over until Xochitl is free,” said Desiree Miller, Santiago’s spouse. “Our family and community have suffered every single day since she was taken. Now that the judge threw out her case, she should not spend another night in detention. We need her home now.”
Still, ICE lawyers said they would appeal the judge’s ruling and will keep her in an ICE detention center in El Paso, according to Norma Islas, Santiago’s immigration lawyer.
It’s unclear why Border Patrol agents approached Santiago, but under federal law, immigration agents have the right to question and search people without a warrant within 100 miles of an international border.
“The victories that we have gotten thus far are important but they’re just the beginning of the fight,” Islas said during a demonstration Wednesday afternoon in front of the El Paso detention facility, where about 30 people waved signs calling for Santiago’s release. “If we’re successful on the merits of this case, it can help other (DACA recipients) from being detained.
Santiago was born in Oaxaca, Mexico, and is Zapotec, an Indigenous group. Her parents brought her and her brother to Florida, where her parents worked as migrant farmer workers. The children learned Spanish and English when they attended school.
In 2012, Santiago applied and received DACA and has renewed her two-year work permit six times.
She became an immigrant rights advocate, first in Florida then Boston before moving to El Paso nearly six years ago. She also worked taking care of a small community farm, where she met Miller.
For years, DACA recipients felt relatively safe from deportation. It was meant as temporary protection from deportation for young immigrants without a criminal record until Congress could approve legislation that would create a permanent solution. Thirteen years after its creation, Congress has not approved such legislation and the Trump administration has prioritized cracking down on undocumented immigrants this year.
The administration has said it is targeting the “worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants, highlighting the arrest of those convicted of rape, pedophila or other violent crimes. But government data shows that the vast majority of the more than 70,000 immigrants detained as of August don’t have a criminal record, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that collects and analyzes federal government data.
The Trump administration has also tried to dismantle DACA, which it has called illegal. So far, federal courts have kept the program in place for current DACA enrollees.
Still, U.S. Department of Homeland Security press secretary Tricia McLaughlin said people who “claim to be recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals are not automatically protected from deportations.” She also described Santiago as a “criminal illegal alien” who was arrested in Arizona on suspicion of trespassing, possession of narcotics and drug paraphernalia in 2020. In the same statement, McLaughlin encouraged DACA recipients to self-deport.
But Graham County Attorney L. Scott Bennett, the Arizona prosecutor whose office reviewed the case in 2021, said his office didn’t prosecute Santiago because of “insufficient information.”
Now, Santiago’s legal team has asked a different federal judge to order ICE to release Santiago from custody. A court hearing is scheduled for Sept. 23 before U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso. Cardone also ordered the Trump administration not to transfer Santiago out of El Paso.
“Constitutional protections generally apply to all people within the jurisdiction of the United States regardless of immigration or citizenship status,” Cardone wrote in her order.
“Simply put, if Santiago is removed from the country, she may never be able to return,” Cardone wrote, adding that if the Trump administration has evidence that can justify her deportation, it can present them in a hearing.
Santiago’s brother, José, said that because his sister is involved in the immigrant rights movement, she knew what to expect in an immigrant detention center and knew that it could be a long fight to get released.
“She’s very aware of what the situation she’s in, knows what she wants to do,” he said.
Miller, who talks to Santiago by phone every morning, said it’s been difficult having her wife detained.
“There’s no reason for them to keep holding her in there. There was no reason for them to detain her in the first place.”
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