Emerson Colindres, detained soccer star, is scared for his future, fellow ICE inmates
CHEVIOT, Ohio ‒ About a week ago, Emerson Colindres was thinking about applying for college. Now he fears being deported to Honduras, a country he left when he was just 8 years old and barely remembers.
"I'm scared because I don't know what's going to happen, not to me or anybody here," he told The Enquirer by phone from jail after calling his mom.
Colindres, who is 19 years old, lived with his mom and 16-year-old sister in a duplex in Cheviot, a Cincinnati suburb. Now, he's sleeping in a bunk bed in a housing block with other ICE inmates at the Butler County Jail in Southwest Ohio, which has a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It's been eight days. He hasn't eaten much besides Cup Noodles soup. He's a picky eater, he said.
And he's calling his mom a lot. It's the only thing that's helped him feel better.
"At first I was struggling a lot. I've been calling my mom a lot. Calling her has helped," he said. "It's been hard. I can't see her. I've never not seen her – not even on FaceTime, nothing like that ‒ for so long. So, it's been hard, and the mental aspect of it has been pretty hard."
Colindres, whose full name is Emerson Colindres Baquedano, was arrested by ICE on June 4, jail records show. His mom, Ada Bell Baquedano Amador, has been able to speak to him by phone, but she hasn't visited him. She's afraid to go to the jail because she and her daughter also lack legal immigration status.
ICE officials told Baquedano Amador she and her daughter have 30 days to leave the country.
In the days since Colindres' arrest, hundreds of people in Greater Cincinnati have protested the standout soccer player's detention. He's heard about the protests and said other ICE detainees at the jail have, too.
"I'm really grateful," he said. "I know it's for me, but it's not just for me. A lot of people here are in the same situation. Some are in worse ones.
"They're feeling sad because they've been separated from their babies, their wives, their families. So, they're feeling sad," he said. "That's what they tell me; that's what I see in people's faces."
"It helps me mentally," Colindres said, "knowing there are people out there who care about me."
Colindres was scheduled to meet with ICE agents at their suburban Cincinnati office in Blue Ash last week to get a GPS ankle monitor, an alternative to detention that ICE uses to track immigrants.
"We showed up. They put my mom and me in a room," he recalled. "There were ICE officers there, and they said, 'We've got to take you right now.' Not 30 days to get out of the country or anything ‒ right now."
In her living room, surrounded by photos and posters of her son, Baquedano Amador said she felt that ICE agents "deceived" him.
"He told me, 'Mom, don't leave me here. I don't want to be locked up,'" she told The Enquirer tearfully in Spanish.
"No one, especially as a mom, can imagine seeing your child go to a place where people that cause harm deserve to be," she said.
Colindres has no criminal record. When he was arrested during his ICE check-in, he became part of a national trend that ramped up after the Trump Administration raised daily arrest quotas for ICE.
"When people go for their check-ins, they're being arrested. When people go to their court hearings, they're being arrested," said Cincinnati immigration attorney Nazly Mamedova. "Sometimes ICE is waiting for you, even if your case has not been completed yet, they're waiting for you behind the court doors."
Mamedova said there have been many arrests at the ICE office in Blue Ash. ICE did not respond to The Enquirer's emailed questions about arrests at the office.
Colindres' mom said his cellmate was also arrested at the office that day. He was called there to have his ankle monitor removed.
'I ask for (Butler County) Sheriff Richard Jones to be a little more pious with immigrants," Baquedano Amador said. "Even for criminals, the treatment should be better, as well as the jail's conditions.'
Fleeing persecution from gangs in Honduras, Colindres' mom applied for asylum when she arrived in the United States with her two small children in 2014. A judge denied her application.
Asylum seekers must prove their government is persecuting them or that they're being persecuted by someone who the government is unable or unwilling to stop. If an application is denied, asylum seekers can appeal that decision, and those appeals can take several years.
Baquedano Amador's appeals were unsuccessful. The family of three was given a final order of removal in August 2023, she said, which meant they were considered deportable by ICE.
But before President Donald Trump entered office, Colindres would have been a low-priority case to ICE because he has no criminal record. That's changed since Trump promised to deport millions of people and his administration set a 3,000 daily arrest goal for ICE agents.
"In the last administration, they (ICE) were more going after people with criminal records and people who posed a danger to the community," Mamedova said. "With this administration, they're no longer prioritizing. They're just going after everyone."
While his mom and sister have been given 30 days to leave the United States, it's unclear when Colindres could be deported.
Before his arrest, Bryan Williams, Colindres' coach on the Cincy Galaxy soccer club, was helping him get offers to play soccer at colleges.
Since then, he said, "the focus has shifted." But even with Colindres in jail, Williams is still working to get him college soccer offers.
"If he gets offers to go to school and play soccer, we hope that means he'll be able to live and remain here," he said. "He's got potential to do big things in soccer. We want to take advantage of that."
The weekend after his arrest, some of Colindres' Cincy Galaxy teammates talked to him on the phone. Preston Robinson, his teammate since 2019, told Colindres about the NBA Finals, since he hadn't been able to watch it.
"We would always goof around," Robinson, 18, said about his friend. "I'm not very outgoing myself, but he talks to everyone, and he talked to me."
On June 8, after talking to Colindres on the phone, Robinson and other teammates joined a protest for him in front of the Butler County jail.
"He was just expecting to go to a check-in," Robison said. "And then he was taken away."
This story was updated to add a video.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio man arrested at routine ICE check-in part of national trend
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