Trump's ICE student deportations leaves school communities distraught

The Herald Scotland

5 days ago

About 20 miles north of his fourth grade classroom, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and detained the boy and his father at their scheduled immigration hearing in Downtown Los Angeles.
The federal immigration enforcement agency, which under President Donald Trump has more aggressively deported undocumented immigrants, separated the young boy and his father for a time and took them to an immigration detention facility in Texas.
Garcia Lara and his father were reunited and deported to Honduras this summer.
Garcia Lara is one of at least five young children and teens who have been rounded up by ICE and deported from the United States with their parents since the start of Trump's second presidential term. Many won't return to their school campuses in the fall.
"Martir's absence rippled beyond the school walls, touching the hearts of neighbors and strangers alike, who united in a shared hope for his safe return," Sara Myers, a spokesperson for the Torrance Unified School District, told USA TODAY.
Trisha McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said his father Martir Garcia-Banegas, 50, illegally entered the United States in 2021 with his son from the Central American country and an immigration judge ordered them to "removed to Honduras" in Sept. 2022.
"They exhausted due process and had no legal remedies left to pursue," McLaughlin wrote USA TODAY in an email.
The young boy is now in Honduras without his teacher, classmates and a brother who lives in Torrance.
"I was scared to come here," Lara told a reporter at the California-based news station ABC7 in Spanish. "I want to see my friends again. All of my friends are there. I miss all my friends very much."
Although no reported ICE deportations have taken place on school grounds, school administrators, teachers and students told USA TODAY that fear lingers for many immigrant students in anticipation of the new school year.
The Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement in the United States. A Reuters analysis of ICE and White House data shows the Trump administration has doubled the daily arrest rates compared to the last decade.
Trump recently signed the House and Senate backed "One Big Beautiful Bill," which increases ICE funding by $75 billion to use to enforce immigration policy and arrest, detain and deport immigrants in the United States.
Although Trump has said he wants to remove immigrants from the country who entered illegally and committed violent crimes, many people without criminal records have also been arrested and deported, including school students who have been picked up along with or in lieu of their parents.
Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, says the Trump administration's immigration agencies are not targeting children in their raids. She called an insinuation that they are "a fake narrative when the truth tells a much different story."
"In many of these examples, the children's parents were illegally present in the country - some posing a risk to the communities they were illegally present in - and when they were going to be removed they chose to take their children with them," Jackson said. "If you have a final deportation order, as many of these illegal immigrant parents did, you have no right to stay in the United States and should immediately self-deport."
Parents can choose to leave their kids behind if they are arrested, detained and deported from the United States, she said.
Some advocates for immigrants in the United States dispute that claim. National Immigration Project executive director Sirine Shebaya said she's aware of undocumented immigrant parents were not given the choice to leave their kids behind or opportunity to make arrangement for them to stay in the United States.
In several cases, ICE targeted parents when they attended routine immigration appointments, while traffic stops led to deportations of two high school students. School principals, teachers and classmates say their absence is sharply felt and other students are afraid they could be next.
From Los Angeles to Massachusetts: arrested, detained and deported
The coastal community of Torrance is in uproar over Garcia Lara's deportation.
After hearing about the arrest of him and his father, Jasmin King, president of the PTA for Torrance Elementary School, asked parents in the group for advice on how to help them.
"One of our students, Martir Garcia Lara, 4th grade, who has been one of our students since 1st grade has recently been held captive in an ICE facility located in Houston Texas," King wrote in a memo to school parents obtained by KTLA in late May. "We are trying to help Martir and his family."
School district officials also received inquiries from the community about what people could do to assist Garcia Lara and his family, said Myers, the district spokesperson.
In the end, they couldn't do much to help the child stay in the United States. Elementary, middle and high school campuses have historically been safe settings for immigrant students and their families, but students may be picked up by ICE when they are off-campus.
'One of our classmates was deported'
About 10 miles north of the White House, Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, also lost a high school junior near the end of the school year.
ICE deported the student to Guatemala, according to the student organization Montgomery Blair Students For Asylum and Immigration Reform. Liliana Lopez, a spokesperson for the district, said ICE has not appeared on the district's campuses.
"Last week, one of our classmates was deported," the group wrote on social media. "We're heartbroken, we're angry, and we're not staying silent."
Kyara Romero Lira, 17, who attends Montgomery Blair, said she found out about the student's deportation through a friend who was close to the girl. She said she could not name the student because the student and her family requested privacy.
ICE did not respond to an inquiry from USA TODAY for more information about the student or why she was deported. School officials said they could not confirm the student's status or name due to privacy regulations.
The teen's arrest elicited an emotional student walkout on the school campus in June.
Romero Lira and Senaya Asfaw, the leaders of a student group on campus called Students For Asylum and Immigration Reform organized the walkout. They are both daughters of immigrants.
Other high schoolers joined them on campus on June 12 in protest of the student's deportation. The teens described the protest as "extremely successful."
Asfaw said there is an increased presence of ICE in their community, which has a large immigrant population.
"There's been unrest, confusion and fear since the new administration came in," Asfaw told USA TODAY. "There's been a lot more ICE sightings in general, not on campus, but in the community."
Romero Lira said the student's deportation "brought something that felt so far away to our doorstep."
She feels "extremely scared" even though she's in a community that's historically friendly to immigrants, she said. Asfaw agreed and reiterated the surprise about the student's deportation hitting so close to home.
"Our school does so much to try to help the immigrant students and parents and families. You can see that within the hallways of Blair," Asfaw said. "There are all kids of immigrants, a lot of Latino immigrants and other immigrants from all over the world."
Detroit teacher will 'miss him in my classroom next year'
Immigration officials arrested Detroit teen and high school senior Maykol Bogoya-Duarte on May 20 when he was driving to a school field trip. Authorities say he was tailgating a car in front of him, which turned out to be an unmarked police car.
Local police officers found out he didn't have a driver's license and arrested the teen during the traffic stop, said his attorney, Ruby Robinson with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center.
A copy of the police report in the case, provided to USA TODAY by the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, showed that police officers called local border patrol agents on the scene to "provide interpretation" between officers and Bogoya-Duarte.
Robinson said immigration agents learned then that Bogoya-Duarte was undocumented and had a deportation order and arrested him. He was 18 at the time of the arrest.
He was also just 3.5 credits away from graduating high school.
Authorities sent him to an immigration processing center in Louisiana and deported him to Colombia in June after he lost his legal appeal to stay in the country to earn his high school diploma.
Bogoya-Duarte had lived in the United States since 2022 and was denied asylum to stay in the country in 2024, Robinson said. Bogoya-Duarte was planning to return to Colombia with his mother after he graduated from high school. He was in the process of obtaining a new passport.
Jackson, from the White House, said Bogoya-Duarte had "previously ignored a judge's removal order and lost his appeal."
"His asylum request was adjudicated prior to removal," she said.
Dozens of community members spoke at a recent Detroit Public Schools meeting condemning Bogoya-Duarte's arrest, Chalkbeat Detroit reported.
"On the day the rest of his classmates were starting summer and graduating, he was in a detention center," Robinson said. He described the teen as conscientious, focused on school, and said his grades had been improving since he entered the United States.
"It was an opportunity cut short for him," he said. Robinson said Bogoya-Duarte was unable to apply for or receive a drivers license because of state restrictions that don't allow undocumented immigrants to obtain them.
Angel Garcia, principal of Western International High School where Bogoya-Duarte attended school, called it "a really scary time" for his community.
"I feel terrible for Maykol's family, but also for our other families who witnessed what happened from afar," Garcia said.
Bogoya-Duarte's deportation and the Trump administration's heavy hand on immigration enforcement caused "quite a dip" in attendance last school year, he said.
Kristen Schoettle, Bogoya-Duarte's teacher from Western International High School, told Chalkbeat Detroit that she's "devastated" and will "miss him in my classroom next year."
"This kid, my bright student, was passed along to prisons for a month, scared and facing awful conditions I'm sure, for the crime of what -- fleeing his country as a minor in search of a better life?" said Schoettle to Chalkbeat Detroit. "And the US government decided his time was better spent in prison than finishing out the school year."
'The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable'
Younger school children who attended Louisiana schools have also been caught in the crosshairs.
ICE deported a 7-year-old girl in New Orleans to Honduras with her mother and her 4-year-old brother who has cancer in late April, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The children are both United States citizens and lived their entires lives in the country, said Sirine Shebaya from the National Immigration Project, which is representing the family.
The family was attending a routine immigration appointment when they were arrested and the mother did not have a criminal history, she said.
The United States Department of Homeland Security said the kids' mother "entered the country illegally and was released into the interior in 2013."
"She was given a final order of deportation in 2015," reads an April 29 post from the agency on X.
"In February of 2025, she was arrested by Kenner Police Department in Louisiana for speeding, driving without insurance, and driving without a license," the agency wrote. "When she was taken into ICE custody in April 2025, she chose to bring both children, who are American citizens, with her to Honduras and presented a valid United States passport for each child."
Shebaya said she was not given the option to leave her kids behind or make arrangements for them to stay and they were deported within 24 hours.
"ICE is supposed to give families time to figure out what options there are for care for their children, but in any cases families are taken into routine check ins, taken into hotel rooms for an extremely brief time and they're told deported tomorrow," Shebaya said.
ICE also deported another New Orleans family, including the mother of an 11-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy, who is an American citizen, after they attended a routine immigration appointment in April. They were given 72 hours before they were deported, Shebaya said.
The mother and the daughter entered the United States together during the first Trump administration and were undocumented immigrants. The young girl was attending school in the United States for about four years, Shebaya said.
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security said on X that the mother "illegally entered the U.S. three times."
"Her and her daughter were given final orders of removal in March of 2020," they wrote."When she was taken into ICE custody in April 2025, she chose to bring her daughter, an American citizen, with her to Honduras."
Shebaya said the mother was told to bring her children and their passports to her immigration appointment.
ICE is "actively instructing people to bring kids in some situations," she said.
"If you're a child going to school or family with mixed status within it, there's a shock factor for families and for schoolmates going to school with them and not seeing them showing up," she said. "If anything, it creates terror day in and day out. Kids are being affected by it."
DHS officials said in a statement about the New Orleans cases that the agency is "not deporting American children" and "takes its responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to ensure that children are safe and protected."
"Parents, who are here illegally, can take control of their departure," they wrote.
Immigration attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Project and other advocates have condemned both New Orleans families' deportation and Trump's immigration crackdown, particularly when children are affected.
"Deporting U.S. citizen children is illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral," said Erin Ware, a senior associate at the law firm Ware Immigration, in a news release from the American Civil Liberties Union, about the New Orleans case. "The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable, and every official responsible for it should be held accountable."
'I was hoping to graduate with my friends'
Nory Sontay Ramos, a 17-year-old honors student at Miguel Contreras High School in Westlake, Los Angeles was preparing for her senior year before she and her mother were arrested by ICE at an immigration appointment.
"ICE took us to a room, and they ended up telling my mom, 'Your case is over, so we have to take you guys with us,'" Sontay Ramos told the news outlet The 19th.
The teen and her mother were undocumented. The duo entered the United States as asylum seekers when Sontay Ramos was 6 years old, NBC 4 Los Angeles reported. McLaughlin said Sontay Ramos and her mother "exhausted all of their legal options to remain in the U.S."
"On March 12, 2019, an immigration judge ordered their removal," she said. "On August 12, 2022, the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed their appeal."
Authorities took the teen and her mother to Texas and deported them to Guatemala on July 4.
"I feel really sad because I was hoping to graduate with my friends and be there with them doing track and field," she told NBC 4.
At Miguel Contreras Learning Complex where she attended school, physical education teacher Manuel Guevara told The 19th that she was "happy-go-lucky."
"Nory is going into her senior year, which is another thing that's just killing me," he told the news outlet. "She was going into her senior year with all this momentum."
'Nobody should be in there'
A student who was detained and later released on bond is left with emotional scars after his experience in a Massachusetts detention facility.
ICE pulled over and arrested Marcelo Gomes da Silva, 18, on his drive to volleyball practice at Milford High School in Massachusetts on May 31.
The next day, Gomes da Silva's girlfriend and the other seniors at Milford High School graduated under a cloud of angst. Gomes da Silva, an 11th grader, was absent, as were two of the graduating students and the families of many others who feared arrest and deportation if they showed up.
"I heard many stories of people who didn't cheer for their children," for fear of being exposed to immigration authorities, Coleen Greco, mother of a volleyball teammate of Gomes da Silva's, told USA TODAY.
Federal officials said they were targeting Gomes da Silva's father, who owns the car he was driving, because he is undocumented and has a history of speeding. Gomes da Silva's attorney Robin Nice said his father has no arrests or convictions for speeding. The family moved to the United States from Brazil when Gomes da Silva was 7 years old and overstayed their visa, according to Nice.
At the school's graduation ceremony, Milford High School Principal Joshua Otlin referred to the community's lingering "fear and anxiety" after Gomes da Silva's arrest.
"There is wrenching despair and righteous anger, where there should be gratitude and joy," he said.
Gomes da Silva was later released from the ICE detention facility after six days in custody. He has applied for asylum in the hopes of avoiding deportation.
A new surge of fear for immigrant families with school children
Officials at schools with large immigrant populations say many students have been fearful since Trump ramped up immigration enforcement.
"There's been very high levels of anxiety in the community about immigration enforcement for many months," said Otlin.
Many immigrant families in Los Angeles County, where Sontay Ramos and Garcia Lara lived, avoided graduation ceremonies after Trump sent National Guard Troops to the Southern California city when Angelenos protested ICE arrests there in June.
How LA school graduations Became the epicenter of fear for ICE family separations
Los Angeles Unified School District has produced "know your rights" cards with directions on how to respond if approached by immigration agents to students who request them, said Christy Hagen, a spokesperson for the district.
Officials there are urging parents and guardians to update their students' emergency contact information and designate a trusted adult as an authorized caregiver in the event they are detained, she said.
School officials elsewhere said they are also making plans to aid immigrant students ahead of the new school year.
Garcia, the high school principal from Detroit, said the school may increase English language instruction for students who speak it as a second language. He wants to give students "more agency in knowing their rights."
"We have to be more up front and honest with students about the dangers that we're currently experiencing in our country, especially for those who are not citizens." he said.
While Garcia Lara won't return to nearby Torrance Unified in the fall, Myers, the spokesperson for his old school district, said the school community's concern about the young boy and his father's well-being has "reaffirmed our district's belief in the human spirit."
Contributing: Ben Adler, USA TODAY; Max Reinhart, The Detroit News
Contact Kayla Jimenez at [e-mail]. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.