Educators Say Worst Fears Realized as High Schoolers Detained by ICE
Students in the Bronx high school that Dylan Lopez Contreras attended before he was arrested by immigration agents last month have sent hundreds of letters in recent weeks to the Western Pennsylvania detention center where he is being held.
Written in a third-period elective class set aside for this purpose, staff made sure to send the missives individually, rather than in a single pile, hoping Contreras would enjoy their support over time while lawyers fight for his release.
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Contreras, 20, didn't always have time for school — working to help support his family would often pull him away, one of his teachers told The 74 — but he left his mark on the ELLIS Prep campus. He was the one who introduced a fun new tradition, one that continues in his absence, maybe even in his honor: He got the kids to play Uno in their downtime.
His teacher could hear their laughter over the game in the hallway. So when it came time to send Contreras a supportive note, telling him to stay strong during a dark time, one of them slipped an Uno card inside the envelope.
'I'm going to give him a +4,' the student told his teacher, referring to a card used to delay or prevent an opponent's victory. 'That would make him laugh.'
Contreras' May 21 arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after a routine mandatory court hearing — and that of a Massachusetts high school junior who was picked up by ICE 10 days later on his way to volleyball practice — have intensified anxiety among educators who serve immigrant students. They say their early fears about President Trump's return to power are now playing out.
And while these young men engage in separate legal battles, CNN reported last week that some 500 children who arrived in the United States as unaccompanied minors have been taken into federal custody by agents following 'welfare checks' that many advocates say are wreaking havoc. Families say the children have been increasingly difficult to find and extract from government 'care.'
The efforts targeting children — some younger than 10 — may be the result of increased pressure from a reportedly furious White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to boost the number of immigration-related arrests to 3,000 per day.
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Adam Strom, executive director of Re-Imagining Migration, said some school districts have been preparing for this escalation — creating rapid response teams and family support networks that activate when immigration enforcement occurs — but others are shocked at what they're witnessing.
'For other communities, this is a wake-up call … the unimaginable is happening in communities like their own, to students not so different from the kids in their own classrooms,' Strom said.
After much protest, 18-year-old Massachusetts teen Marcelo Gomes da Silva was granted bond and released from custody Thursday. He said he had not showered in six days, had crackers for lunch and dinner, slept on a concrete floor with a metallic blanket and had to use the bathroom in front of 40 other men.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said he should never have been taken into custody by ICE agents, who later admitted they were looking for his father.
'While ICE officers never intended to apprehend Gomes-DaSilva, he was found to be in the United States illegally and subject to removal proceedings, so officers made the arrest,' homeland security officials said in a Twitter post.
The New York and Massachusetts cases come amid others. An 18-year-old student from Colombia living in Detroit, was picked up May 20 as he was driving friends to join their high school field trip. Federal officials said he already had a removal order from a judge.
In another case, a 19-year-old Georgia woman was held in an ICE detention facility for weeks after she was arrested by local police in early May on traffic charges that were later dismissed.
As the cop told Ximena Arias Cristobal he was taking her to jail, she replied shakily that she couldn't go because she had finals the next week and her family 'really depends on this.' Released on bond May 22, the young woman is now facing deportation to Mexico, a country she left when she was 4.
Far younger children — including toddlers — have been defending themselves in immigration court for years. And the many organizations that have helped them through the system are now under attack. Some have been issued stop work orders — Trump ceased funding for their legal representation — leaving them in further jeopardy.
Nancy Duchesneau, a senior pre-K-to-12 research manager at the advocacy organization EdTrust, said it's too early to tell if the country's most recent immigration enforcement campaign — manifested in raids and surprise detentions after court appearances — has led to a drop in school attendance as it has in the past.
Duchesneau noted that ICE's aggressive tactics disrupt learning and cause harm to a wide swath of students, not just immigrants or those with foreign-born parents.
'When we see trauma happen to other kids, or to other people, we still have emotional impacts from that,' she said. 'Seeing your friends taken away — kids that you know — even if you are an American citizen, we don't know what else could happen.'
Like Strom, she said schools should make sure there are clear policies in place for when ICE agents visit campus and that both students and staff know their rights.
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Eric Marquez, one of Dylan's teachers at ELLIS Preparatory Academy, said he taught Contreras for weeks last fall before the young man, who worked as a delivery driver, started regularly missing school.
'If he had a chance to work, he worked,' Marquez said.
His teachers understand that struggle. ELLIS Prep is a small specialized school that serves older newcomer students with limited English, nearly all of whom had arrived in the country just weeks or months before their admission. Many are behind on their credits and some have massive gaps in their education. Despite these challenges, Marquez said many go on to college.
The 74 published a 16-month-long undercover investigation last year into how schools respond to enrollment requests from students like Contreras. The fictional teen in The 74's Unwelcome to America project, 'Hector Guerrero,' was also Venezuelan. But unlike Contreras, Hector, 19, was refused admission to more than 200 high schools across the U.S. where he had a legal right to attend based on his age.
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At the time of our reporting, Donald Trump, then a leading presidential contender, was once again vilifying immigrants on the campaign trail, a winning tactic for a man who rode a similar wave of xenophobia into office in 2016.
Worry was beginning to build over how far he might go as president to deport undocumented children and families.
Now five months into his second term, Marquez remembers the moment he learned his student had been arrested and was living out that fear.
'For me, it was soul-crushing,' the teacher said. 'It hit everyone. It was symbolic in a way. He was that over-age, under-credited student with a limited, interrupted formal education. But he was super smart. He totally can go to college. He really can.'
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