Ernesto Zuniga Hilario says he refused to leave the country. He says he never saw an immigration judge. Yet, he says, authorities flew him to Mexico City anyway. On Tuesday, his attorneys asked a federal judge in the Western District of Texas to help bring him home.
Zuniga Hilario, a Mexican national who lived in the United States for nearly two decades, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. It alleges immigration authorities deported him without a valid removal order, despite his repeated refusals to depart. The Department of Homeland Security flatly denies his account, creating a direct dispute over what happened inside a Texas detention facility.
Who Is Affected
The petition identifies his wife, Obdulia Cervantes Vega, as a lawful permanent resident. The couple has four U.S.-citizen children. Zuniga Hilario said he last entered the country without inspection around 2008 and lived near Lometa, Texas, before authorities detained him.
Court filings say immigration officers apprehended him while he traveled with his family for a therapy appointment. Authorities held him at the T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor, Texas. An ICE detainee-locator record submitted as an exhibit also lists the facility as his detention location.
Zuniga Hilario said Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him in Texas in September and removed him without giving him a meaningful chance to understand or challenge the government's legal basis.
Two Accounts, One Deportation
During detention, Zuniga Hilario alleges, officers repeatedly asked if he wanted to depart voluntarily. He said no each time. He wanted to present his case, he said, and expected to appear before an immigration judge. Instead, the petition alleges, authorities put him on a bus, took him to an airport, then flew him to Mexico City. He says he didn't leave voluntarily.
DHS offers a different account. A spokesperson told Newsweek: "Any allegation that Ernesto Zuniga Hilario didn't receive due process is FALSE. Zuniga Hilario signed his voluntary departure form on September 6 in blue ink. He left the United States and returned to Mexico on September 16. Breaking our country's laws is always a bad decision."
The agency said ICE arrested him on September 6 after a traffic stop conducted by the Lampasas County Sheriff's Office. It said he entered the country illegally "at an unknown date and time by sneaking across our border on foot."
The two accounts can't both be right. The petition says he repeatedly refused voluntary departure; DHS says he signed the form.
The Legal Question
The lawsuit argues immigration authorities had no legal basis to deport Zuniga Hilario because he wasn't subject to an expedited removal order or an order from an immigration judge. He acknowledges previous encounters with immigration authorities but says none resulted in a removal order.
His attorneys say authorities denied him due process. They argue that if officials were reinstating an earlier removal order, they had to notify him and give him a chance to contest it.
The petition acknowledges a possible jurisdictional hurdle: authorities had already removed him when he filed the case. His attorneys argue the situation differs because, they allege, the government removed him without an underlying removal order or a meaningful chance to challenge the action.
The report places the case within a wider pattern. Under the Trump administration's mass deportation policy, it says, cases have involved wrongful deportations and removals carried out in defiance of court orders. Federal judges have challenged the administration over wrongful removals and, in some cases, ordered DHS to help return people who were improperly deported. Newsweek said it emailed his legal team on Wednesday and was awaiting a response.
Why This Matters:
The central dispute is whether someone can be removed from the country without a judge or a valid order. Zuniga Hilario's attorneys say he was. DHS says he wasn't. A federal court will have to decide which account holds up, and the answer reaches beyond one family. Four U.S.-citizen children are separated from their father, while their mother is a lawful permanent resident. If the allegations are accurate, the case shows what can happen when enforcement moves faster than the legal process meant to check it. Due process exists to catch errors before they become irreversible. Deportation is hard to undo from the wrong side of a border. The report says federal judges have already pushed back in other wrongful-removal cases, making courts a key check on executive enforcement power.
- ernesto zuniga hilario
- department of homeland security
- immigration and customs enforcement
- deportation
- due process
- immigration court
- texas
- mexico