For over a decade, Alejandro Juarez served Donald Trump faithfully. Now, he’s thousands of miles away from his family after being deported—likely illegally—on his one-time boss’s orders.
Juarez, 39, was deported to Mexico just five days after being detained by immigration officials in September, The New York Times reported Thursday.
Juarez, who is both a husband and father of two, had built a life in New York—including spending more than 10 years working as a server and food runner at the Trump National Golf Club Westchester.
He was returned to the country he fled two decades ago without ever receiving a hearing or appearing before a judge—a move that appears to violate federal immigration law, according to the Times. On Sept. 25, at the time his hearing was set to take place, Juarez was no longer in ICE custody—or even in the United States.
“This is unprecedented in my 20 years of practice—an individual being removed without any hearing, leaving even the court and DHS confused,” Juarez’s lawyer, Anibal Romero, told the Times.
Initially, the Department of Homeland Security falsely told the Times that Juarez had not been deported, claiming instead that he was detained over a 2022 conviction for driving under the influence with a child in the car.
Later, in a rare admission of fault, ICE officials acknowledged that Juarez had been erroneously expelled. They had planned to transfer him to a detention center in Arizona, but reportedly placed him on the wrong plane.
Trump administration officials said they would attempt to bring Juarez back to the U.S.—only to deport him again using more legally sound methods.
Juarez worked at Trump’s golf club from 2007 until 2019, when he and a dozen others were abruptly fired for being undocumented. He told The Washington Post at the time that Eric Trump had personally greeted him by name at a holiday party just one month before his termination.
“I was serving hors d’oeuvres,” Juarez recalled. “And he told me, ‘Thanks, Alejandro. Thanks for everything, okay?’”
Juarez is among the many immigrants caught up in Trump’s deportation crackdown—often without due process or proper legal review.
His case echoes that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father mistakenly deported last spring to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, despite a court order barring his repatriation.
While Trump claimed that his administration did not have the authority to order Abrego Garcia’s release from a foreign prison, the Supreme Court eventually ruled that they had to “facilitate” his return.
A Wednesday YouGov/Economist poll found that 57 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance as president—and even more oppose his hardline immigration policies, which were a central plank of his 2024 campaign.
The Daily Beast has reached out to both the White House and ICE for comment.
