![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/omar-salazar.jpeg\")
<\/a>Omar Salazar. Image via LinkedIn<\/p>\nSalazar isn\u2019t a Dreamer. When DACA was announced, he had been in the United States for four years. But in order to qualify, applicants had to have lived in the U.S. for 5 years. The 5-year residency requirement stemmed from the insistence that Dreamers be \u201cdeeply rooted\u201d in American culture to qualify. That one-year gap left him classified as an unauthorized immigrant, ineligible for the protections that Dreamers have. As President Obama said about Dreamers, \u201cThey are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Salazar epitomizes an all-American success story, but without that paper documentation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
2nd Strike: Driving in Texas<\/p>\n
Texas is more anti-immigrant than other states, yet there are about 2 million<\/a> immigrants without legal status living in the state.<\/p>\n In 1996, Section 287(g) <\/a>of the Immigration and Nationality Act was enacted, authorizing ICE to delegate certain federal immigration enforcement functions to state and local law enforcement agencies. This essentially allows local law enforcement to serve as a supplemental arm of ICE.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas has 264 such agreements for local law enforcement collaboration with ICE, and Lubbock has participated since 2020.<\/p>\n Crossing a white lane marker is not illegal<\/a> in Texas, but drivers can be stopped if a police officer decides their lane change was unsafe. After Salazar was pulled over for crossing the white line by the Lubbock police, he was asked for his drivers\u2019 license. He instead mistakenly provided his Mexican consular matricula. He was told to wait while everything was sorted out. After a few minutes ICE officers, summoned by the Lubbock police, arrived to detain him.\u00a0<\/p>\n So, Salazar is among the three-quarters of immigrants in ICE detention centers<\/a> (50,000) who have never been convicted of a crime. But because of a routine traffic stop in Lubbock, Texas, he is now behind bars with the possibility of being deported to a country he didn\u2019t grow up in.<\/p>\n Salazar\u2019s bad luck didn\u2019t end there.\u00a0<\/p>\n After being detained in Lubbock, Salazar was transferred to the Bluebonnet ICE Detention Center in the north Texas catchment area. It is considered to be among the worst detention centers in the system \u2014 due primarily to overcrowding. In June of last year, a few months before Salazar was detained there, it made headline news when Venezuelan deportees lined themselves up in the recreation yard to form a SOS that was photographed from the air<\/a>. During his six months there, Salazar has had difficulty getting his medical prescriptions filled and getting new glasses. Nonetheless, in the spirit of volunteerism, he has made the best of his situation by tutoring fellow detainees.<\/p>\n 3rd Strike: Detention in the 5th Circuit<\/p>\n Even though most detained immigrants are eligible to be released on bond while their immigration court cases proceed, Salazar was deemed ineligible for release.<\/p>\n This is because a month before Salazar was detained, the Acting Director of ICE issued an unprecedented order<\/a> stating that detained immigrants who had entered the U.S. \u201cwithout inspection,\u201d as Salazar had at age 11, should not be considered to be eligible to be released from ICE detention centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under immigration law, ICE classified these detainees as \u201crecently arrived,\u201d irrespective of the length of time they had lived in the U.S. For years, immigration judges assessed bond determinations on whether a detainee was a flight risk. The ICE memo appeared to be designed as a legal maneuver to stem the tide of habeas corpus petitions in which federal district courts were finding that ICE arrests had been illegal.<\/p>\n On September 5, 2025, the week after Salazar was detained, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), an arm of the Department of Justice, ruled in favor of ICE\u2019s position.\u00a0<\/p>\n Immigrant advocates immediately appealed since the decision would affect the outcome of many immigrants who might be unlawfully detained in the future as well as those who were already being held in ICE detention centers. As Salazar\u2019s lawyer explained, they tried three times to secure bond for him but failed even after a California federal district court had issued a preliminary injunction (Maldonado Bautista v. Noem) blocking the DOJ order in November 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n The California court recently issued a February 18, 2026 decision requiring bond hearings<\/a> (not necessarily approvals, just consideration of bond) for all of the affected detainees. However, that decision does not apply in the states under the jurisdiction of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (one of which is Texas), which had already issued a binding order affirming a district court decision (Buenrostro-Mendez) in support of the DOJ order.<\/p>\n Why Salazar\u2019s Case Matters<\/p>\n The outcome in Salazar\u2019s case is bad news, not only for him and his wife personally, but for millions of immigrants, and for the entire U.S. court system.\u00a0<\/p>\n More than 500,000 immigrants<\/a> who, like Salazar, were brought to the U.S. as children and have grown up here, currently lack DACA protections \u2014 constantly threatened by the risk of deportation and without an opportunity to work legally. It is expected that, as a result of litigation, it will soon be legal for USCIS to approve initial DACA applications.<\/a> But USCIS has not processed them for the past 5 years<\/a> so it is not clear at what pace it would proceed or whether the current administration might soon seek to terminate DACA. Confusingly, those living in Texas may be protected from deportation but not authorized to work.<\/p>\n These uncertainties jeopardize the U.S. economy since it may affect the economic and intellectual contributions of hundreds of thousands of youth growing up in the U.S. who are, like Salazar, held in legal limbo by a system that never found a way to legalize their status.<\/p>\n If local law enforcement focused on community well-being instead of helping ICE with enforcement, there would be a saving of taxpayer dollars, and a strengthening of efforts to prevent bona fide crime, and vitalize civic participation.<\/p>\n There is a rapidly-growing divide between the Trump administration\u2019s deliberate misreading of immigration law that rests on a multitude of pretextual arguments. This practice results in widespread ICE lawlessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n