A US high school student was killed in Mexico three weeks after US immigration officials threatened him with deportation, according to local news reports.

Manuel Antonio Cano Pacheco left Mexico at age three, and spent most of his life with this parents and three younger siblings in Des Moines, Iowa, the Des Moines Register reports.

As a teenager, he was granted protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme (DACA) – an Obama-era programme offering protections for those brought into the US illegally as children. Manuel attended a local high school, and was expected to graduate in May. According to his friends, he had a college scholarship lined up in Chicago.

Instead, he was murdered in the Mexican state of Zacatecas while out with a family friend, his mother told the Register.

Manuel’s DACA status was revoked in 2017, after he was convicted on two misdemeanours, according to a spokesperson for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In the months following, he was convicted of two more – including driving under the influence.

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According to his friend, Juan Verduzco, Manuel became depressed after his father was sent to prison on drug charges. His father’s departure meant he had to support his family, as well as his child, who was born approximately a year ago. He began drinking as a way to cope.

An immigration judge granted Manuel “voluntary departure” in April 2018. If he had not complied with the departure, he would have been deported. Instead, an ICE escort accompanied him to the border in Laredo, Texas, and turned him over to the Mexican government.

Manuel returned to Zacatecas, where his family was from. The area was listed as one of Mexico’s most dangerous in a 2017 index compiled by the Citizens’ Council on Public Security and Criminal Justice. Last summer, the bodies of 14 people were found buried in the area in a mass grave.

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Manuel was killed in Zacatecas while getting food with an acquaintance of his cousin, his family said.

"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said his friend, Mr Verduzco.

The ICE spokesman, Shawn Neudauer, told the Register that the safety of former DACA recipients is not the US government’s responsibility once they are handed over to Mexican authorities.