Immigration officials recently deported a Livermore father the night before a U.S. District Court judge ordered him to remain in the country while facing removal orders that, the judge said, were dripping with “inequities.”
The government’s swift removal of Miguel Lopez, 46, on the evening of June 6 came just hours before U.S. District Court Judge Trina Thompson demanded federal authorities keep the decades-long Livermore resident in the country, court filings show. The judge, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, referenced the nation’s long history of inviting immigrants to its shores, as well as its more recent penchant to have “turned our back to this foundational principle — too often when it was needed most.”
“The facts of this case highlight one of those moments,” the judge wrote in her order demanding he stay in the country. “The inequities seep from the pages, staining every word.”
The order came too late, Lopez’s attorney said. By then, Lopez was already in Tijuana, Mexico, where he called his wife Saturday morning to inform her that he had been forcibly removed from the United States.
On Wednesday, Lopez remained in a state of shock.
“I’m a little bit stressed because I’m not used to this,” Lopez said in a phone interview from Mexico City. “I’m just trying to be strong because of my family.”
The father of three does not appear to fit the mold of the “blood-thirsty” criminals that President Donald Trump railed against on the campaign trail, amid vows to “launch the largest deportation program in American history.” Rather, Judge Thompson said, Lopez had been trying to become a legal citizen for almost two decades, all the while working and paying taxes and having “strong ties to his community” and “no adverse criminal history.”
But Lopez’s recent detainment appears to fit a theme in the Bay Area — ICE officials detaining migrants while they intersect with the immigration system, be it at scheduled court hearings or during routine check-ins at ICE offices. Elsewhere in the state and nation, such as Los Angeles, ICE agents have begun moving more frequently into communities to raid Home Depot stores and workplaces where migrants typically gather and work.
In Lopez’s case, he was detained in recent weeks during a routine check-in at an ICE office in San Francisco. He could not recall being told why he was detained, and received few details about how long he’d be detained. He was then surprised to find he would be deported without signing any deportation papers.
Rosa Lopez wipes tears during a rally in support of her husband Miguel Lopez at the Livermorium Plaza in Livermore, Calif., on Wednesday, June 4, 2025. Lopez, a native from Mexico, a Livermore resident and father of three, was detained by immigration officials when he showed up for a citizenship hearing in San Francisco last week. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Lopez spent 10 days in detainment in McFarland, where he was for the first day held in a cell with half a dozen other detainees sharing a long bench, one toilet and limited standing room. He was first fed bean burritos, he said, and given some bottled water to drink. Next, he was moved to a larger holding facility with dozens of other detainees, given a bunk bed to share, three daily meals and had to surrender his civilian clothes for a detainment uniform.
Lopez said he was transferred to a facility in Bakersfield on Friday. Around midnight on Saturday morning, immigration officials loaded him and a handful of others into a van and drove them across the border to Tijuana, where he said he was handed over to Mexican immigration authorities.
Miguel was given back his street clothes, cell phone and credit cards and given 2,000 pesos, he said. There is temporary migrant housing nearby the immigration offices, but Miguel’s family instead arranged someone to pick him up and take him to a hotel.
Lopez crossed the U.S. border in the 1990s, when he was 18 years old, and quickly made Livermore his home. He filed paperwork for a green card in 2007, the judge’s restraining order said, but was swiftly denied because he had previously been sent back to Mexico while first trying to enter the U.S.
He has been fighting deportation orders ever since. In 2012, a judge tossed one such removal order. Yet the government appealed that decision, leaving Miguel Lopez with an active deportation order in recent months. In early May, his attorney filed a new legal challenge to keep him in the country — one that Judge Thompson said the courts needed more time to resolve.
“He had been attempting to gain immigration status for almost twenty years,” Judge Thompson wrote in her restraining order. “And for almost twenty-seven years, Plaintiff had been working and paying taxes. He is more than his status — Plaintiff is a husband and father; a grandfather and uncle; a homeowner and taxpayer; and a colleague and friend.”
Often, migrants with active immigration cases are told to periodically check in to ICE offices, so that federal agents can remain up to date on their status. Migrant advocates have increasingly suggested people consult with attorneys ahead of such check-ins. Last week, for example, more than a dozen people — including women and children — were detained at the office and flown elsewhere in the country, said Sean McMahon, a senior attorney with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.
ICE agents also appear to be targeting people attending hearings at immigration courthouses in San Francisco and Concord, often after government attorneys ask judges to dismiss migrants’ asylum cases. That includes four people detained after hearings in Concord on Tuesday, as well as at least four other people detained in May, said Sergio Jaime-Lopez, community defense coordinator with the Contra Cost Immigrant Rights Alliance. A similar number of people have been detained at the San Francisco courthouse.
On Thursday, Lopez’s attorney was livid at his client’s deportation.
“Our whole argument is he never got his day in the court,” said the attorney, Saad Ahmad. “We are dealing with this kind of behavior because the government thinks they can get away with it.”
Attorneys fear that clients may decide not to show up for immigration hearings. Such a decision would be disastrous, they say, given that missed court dates lead to immediate deportation orders.
“Frankly, I believe that this is exactly what the government is trying to do right now – they’re trying to create this fear and chilling effect,” said Heliodoro Moreno, a senior immigration attorney who represents migrants as part of the Stand Together Contra Costa program.
From left to right: Rosa Lopez, Miguel Lopez and Julian Lopez are pictured in Mexico City at La Basilica de Santa María de Guadalupe in this courtesy photo. Miguel was deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Sat., June 7 after being detained in San Francisco on May 27 at the ICE offices. After being held in several detainment facilities throughout California, he was eventually sent to Tijuana where he was handed over to Mexican immigration authorities.
Days before he was deported, at least 200 residents rallied in downtown Livermore demanding he be released back to his family.
After receiving his call Saturday from Mexico, though, Lopez’s wife flew to the country with her youngest of three children to be with him.
The family’s plan is to try to stabilize him for the time being while they work with their lawyers back in the states to figure out a way to bring him back. But life back in Mexico has already proven difficult — Rosa said her husband’s brother was killed in Mexico a couple years ago, and his father and other brother receive violent threats from gangs in the area.
It all feels so unfamiliar to a person who last lived in Mexico 29 years ago. Until being taken by ICE agents, he paid a mortgage on a house and worked as a welder and machinist for Wente Winery. It’s a job he’s held for nine years, and included health insurance for his family.
On Wednesday afternoon, Miguel Lopez, his wife and their youngest child huddled together in a Mexico City church, praying for their family to receive better news.
“This is not my home,” Miguel said. “I just think about going back home.”
