A three-judge panel within the Department of Justice reversed a federal immigration judge's decision to shield a DACA enrollee from deportation, siding with DHS attorneys and sending the case to a new judge, a ruling that could remove a legal obstacle the agency has faced in pursuing removal orders against illegal immigrants enrolled in the Obama-era program.
The Board of Immigration Appeals issued the order late last week in the case of Catalina "Xóchitl" Santiago, whom Breitbart News identified as a DACA enrollee whose deportation proceedings had been terminated by immigration judge Michael Pleters. Pleters cited Santiago's DACA status as grounds for ending the proceedings. DHS attorneys appealed, and the BIA panel agreed with them.
The case matters because it tests a question that has lingered since the Obama administration created DACA by executive order: whether enrollment in the program can itself serve as a legal basis for an immigration judge to halt removal. The BIA's answer, at least in this case, was no.
The immigration judge whose decision was overturned, Michael Pleters, is the husband of Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat. Breitbart News reported that connection alongside its account of the BIA order. No direct action in the Santiago case is attributed to Escobar, but the family tie between a sitting member of Congress and the judge who terminated deportation proceedings adds a layer of political interest to an already consequential ruling.
Pleters' reasoning for terminating Santiago's proceedings rested on her DACA enrollment. The BIA panel rejected that reasoning, remanded the case, and directed that a different immigration judge handle it going forward. The order did not resolve Santiago's ultimate fate, it simply ensured the deportation case would proceed rather than die on DACA grounds.
The administration has fought a string of legal battles over immigration enforcement in federal courts. An appeals court recently blocked the White House's asylum ban at the southern border, setting up a potential Supreme Court showdown over executive power on immigration.
Former President Obama launched the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by executive order, shielding hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from deportation. The program was always legally contested, critics argued it bypassed Congress, while supporters called it a humanitarian necessity. What is less debated is the size of the population it covers and the enforcement questions it creates.
DHS officials revealed in February that in 2025 alone, more than 260 DACA enrollees had been arrested for crimes. Eighty-six were deported that same year. Almost all of those arrested had prior criminal records, according to a document posted on Sen. Mark Kelly's Senate website.
Those figures undercut the familiar political narrative that DACA recipients are uniformly law-abiding members of their communities. The numbers are a fraction of the total DACA population, but 260 criminal arrests in a single year, nearly all involving repeat offenders, is not a rounding error. It is a pattern that DHS has now documented and disclosed to Congress.
Separate from immigration enforcement, the administration has also clashed with federal judges on other fronts. One court invalidated the Pentagon's press credential policy, prompting an immediate appeal, part of a broader pattern of judicial intervention in executive branch decisions.
The BIA's order does not strip DACA status from Santiago or anyone else. It does something narrower but potentially more important for enforcement: it establishes that an immigration judge cannot simply terminate deportation proceedings because the respondent holds DACA. The case must be heard on its merits.
For DHS attorneys, that distinction is the difference between a case that moves forward and one that vanishes from the docket. If immigration judges across the country had followed Pleters' approach, treating DACA enrollment as a de facto shield against removal, the government's ability to pursue deportation cases against enrollees who commit crimes or otherwise lose eligibility would have been severely hampered.
The BIA sits within the Department of Justice and functions as the appellate body for immigration court decisions. Its rulings carry weight across the immigration court system, and this one sends a clear signal: DACA is not a get-out-of-deportation card.
The legal and political fights over executive authority have extended well beyond immigration. A federal judge recently halted construction on a White House ballroom project, ruling the president lacked authority to proceed, another example of the judiciary drawing lines around presidential power.
DACA was sold as a limited, compassionate measure for people brought to the country illegally as children. Over time, it became something larger: a bureaucratic category that, in practice, insulated enrollees from the normal consequences of being in the country without legal status. Judges like Pleters took the next step, treating DACA enrollment as grounds to shut down deportation proceedings entirely.
That is a significant leap. DACA was never a statute. It was never passed by Congress. It was an executive action, one that multiple courts have questioned and that the current administration has sought to wind down. When an immigration judge treats an executive memo as if it were binding law, the result is an enforcement gap that elected officials never voted to create.
The BIA's order closes that gap, at least in Santiago's case. Whether it sets a broader precedent will depend on how other immigration judges and future BIA panels handle similar disputes. But the direction is clear: DHS has the authority to pursue removal, and DACA enrollment alone is not enough to stop it.
Meanwhile, courts continue to shape the boundaries of executive power in other arenas. After a shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, some observers argued the incident strengthened the case for the administration's ballroom project, a reminder that security and legal authority remain intertwined across multiple policy fronts.
The BIA order does not include a publicly reported case number, and the exact reasoning the panel used has not been detailed beyond its rejection of Pleters' DACA-based rationale. What the new immigration judge will decide on the merits of Santiago's case remains unknown. So does the broader question of how many similar cases, where judges terminated proceedings on DACA grounds, may now be revisited.
The February disclosure from DHS, more than 260 arrests, 86 deportations, nearly all with prior records, suggests the enforcement pipeline is already active. The BIA ruling removes one more obstacle from that pipeline.
When an executive memo written by one president can be used by an immigration judge to block enforcement by another, something has gone wrong with the system. The BIA, to its credit, just said so.
