LOS ANGELES — More than two years ago, Daniel Ramirez Medina, an unauthorized immigrant, applied for a special program created under the Obama administration that would allow him to stay and work in the United States.

But on Friday morning, when federal immigration agents showed up at his home in Seattle to detain his father, they took Mr. Ramirez, 23, as well. His lawyers have now sued the federal government, arguing that he is being held in custody unconstitutionally, in an “unprecedented and unjustified” case.

“This is a clear violation of his rights,” said Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer with Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm, who helped file the case on Monday in Federal District Court in Seattle. “There was a solemn promise from the executive branch that they would be protected. People have staked their lives and well-being on that promise.”

President Trump has been pushing to speed up deportations of unauthorized immigrants, fulfilling a campaign pledge. Since he signed an executive order on Jan. 25 vastly expanding who is considered a priority for deportation, there have been reports of widespread roundups by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including the arrests of more than 600 people across the country last week. It was still unclear, however, whether enforcement had significantly increased; unauthorized immigrants were regularly detained and deported during the Obama administration.

Immigrants like Mr. Ramirez are living in a precarious legal state. He is one of more than 750,000 people to receive work permits and permission to stay under a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, since the program began in 2012. To be eligible, recipients have to prove that they have been in the country since they were children and that they have no serious criminal record.

Mr. Trump has given mixed messages about whether he intends to renew the program. During the campaign, he criticized it as an illegal amnesty program, but more recently he said he would “work something out” for the recipients.

Mr. Ramirez, who came to the United States from Mexico when he wasabout 7 years old, had not been charged with any crime that would jeopardize his DACA status. Lawyers and advocates said on Tuesday that before Mr. Ramirez’s case, they had not heard of any DACA permit holder in good standing who had been held in detention.

A spokeswoman for the United States attorney in Seattle said on Tuesday afternoon that the government was still reviewing the case.

A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement late Tuesday night that Mr. Ramirez is a “self-admitted gang member” who is a “risk to public safety” and has been placed in removal proceedings in immigration court.

Mr. Rosenbaum said Mr. Ramirez was “repeatedly pressured” by immigration agents to falsely admit a gang affiliation, a charge he “unequivocally denies.”

Immigration officers appeared to target Mr. Ramirez’s father because he had already been ordered deported, his lawyers said. After the officers arrested Mr. Ramirez’s father, he asked to go back into his home so that he could tell his sons about the arrest.

The officers then asked Daniel Ramirez, “Are you legally here?” according to the lawsuit. “Yes, I have a work permit,” Mr. Ramirez told them.

His older brother, who is also a DACA recipient, then told him not to answer any additional questions, the lawsuit said.

Immigration officials then took Mr. Ramirez to a facility in Seattle, where he handed over his wallet, which held his work permit that identified him as a recipient of DACA, according to the lawsuit. After seeing the permit, an officer told him, “It doesn’t matter because you weren’t born in this country,” according to the lawsuit. Mr. Ramirez was then fingerprinted, booked and taken to a detention center in Tacoma, where he has remained. His brother was not detained.

At the time the DACA program began, there was considerable worry among immigrants that people would be giving the government too much information about their whereabouts, leaving them vulnerable to deportation later. But they were assured that their information would not be used against them.

The government went so far as to set up a 24-hour legal hotline for DACA recipients to call if they are taken in for deportation. Despite calls to that number, immigration officials did not make any attempt to have Mr. Ramirez released.

The lawsuit argues that DACA sets a clear expectation of protection from deportation for recipients and that Mr. Ramirez clearly poses no threat. Mr. Ramirez recently moved to Seattle from California so that he could find a job with better pay to support his 3-year-old son, his lawyers said. The boy lives with his mother.

“Our hope and expectation is that Daniel is going to be released quickly and that the government will recognize this is a mistake,” Mr. Rosenbaum said, adding that a few other DACA recipients had been arrested in the past several years, but that all were released almost immediately.

Mexican Immigrant May Be First DACA Participant Arrested Under Trump

In a tweet on Tuesday evening, the National Immigration Law Center called the news “unacceptable and horrifying.”

The immigrant, Daniel Ramirez Medina, has a 3-year-old child and no criminal record. He was detained last week in Washington State at the home of his father, whom U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had come to arrest, although it’s not clear why.

Citing a court filing in the case, Reuters reported that Mr. Ramirez had been allowed to live and work in the United States under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, which temporarily put off deportation proceedings against participants in the program. DACA participants, often called “Dreamers,” now number some 750,000 people, many of them college students.

Because President Trump won election in part on the basis of his strong stand against undocumented immigrants, many DACA participants have feared that they would eventually end up the targets of a government crackdown. Mr. Trump’s executive order last month blocking visitors from seven majority-Muslim countries and all refugees only stoked those fears. The order is currently on hold while it faces several lawsuits.

Mr. Ramirez’s lawyers this week challenged his arrest in a petition filed in federal court, saying that the DACA program protected him. One of the lawyers said, “We are hoping this detention was a mistake.”

Late Tuesday a judge at the U.S. District Court in Seattle ordered the federal government to respond to Mr. Ramirez’s petition, The Seattle Times reported. The judge, James P. Donohue, specifically asked the government to explain why Mr. Ramirez was being detained “given that he has been granted deferred action under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.” Judge Donohue also asked whether the government planned to deport Mr. Ramirez. A hearing is scheduled for Friday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials declined to comment about the case to Reuters, and the Justice Department is still studying the case, a spokeswoman said.

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