Man deported after visiting family grave in Mexico is back in Kansas City

This story was originally published by The Beacon, an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.

Evenezer Cortez Martinez is back on U.S. soil, landing in Kansas City Tuesday afternoon after being deported.

The DACA recipient and Kansas father of three feared that he wouldn’t be able to return from Mexico, a country he left at the age of 4. His Roeland Park family embraced in a tearful and joyful reunion at Kansas City International airport.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection had stopped Cortez Martinez at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport more than two weeks ago, after he took a short trip to Mexico to visit his grandfather’s grave.

He was trying to return to Kansas City.

Instead, he was detained and questioned, then put back on a plane to Mexico City on March 23.

Cortez Martinez is a recipient of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

He had never been back to his birth nation, having been brought to the U.S. by his parents as a toddler. His farmworker father tended grapevines in California.

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Prior to his scheduled trip to Mexico, Cortez Martinez had applied for and received permission to travel and return to the U.S., a process called “advance parole.”

His case is an example of an immigrant who “did everything the right way” and still ran into problems, said Rekha Sharma-Crawford, the Kansas City-based immigration attorney who filed a lawsuit April 2 on behalf of Cortez Martinez with the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas. The case, first reported by The Beacon, drew national attention.

“The lawsuit has been dismissed because you are home and that was really the point of the lawsuit,” Sharma-Crawford told her client at the airport.

The government had asked for time to respond, indicating that the issue could be resolved without the judge hearing the case, said Sharma-Crawford.

There seemed to be some confusion at the time when he was detained in Dallas, Cortez Martinez recalled, because a supervisor had been called over.

Still, Cortez Martinez said he was told that he’d been ordered removed in absentia on June 11, 2024, and that his documents allowing him to travel had been issued in error.

Cortez Martinez said he was never made aware of that order.

“I never got any notice,” he said. “I check everything because there is all of the paper that we get for DACA renewal.”

His current DACA is valid until October 2026.

Cortez Martinez will now have an opportunity to resolve the re-calendaring of removal proceedings in Kansas City’s immigration court, said Sharma-Crawford.

“I trust you,” Cortez Martinez said to Sharma-Crawford. “Let’s talk as soon as possible.”

His children carried a poster they’d made, each signing a note to their father.

They also brought mylar “Happy Birthday” balloons.

Cortez Martinez turned 40 while he was gone. Several other family members also had recent birthdays.

Laughing, Cortez Martinez hugged his wife and declared, “We’ll have one single party.”