Deportation of 7-year-old NYC student draws criticism from city and state officials

New York City officials are condemning the deportation of a 7-year-old girl as lawmakers call on the federal government to return her and her family to New York after they were detained at immigration court last week.

The family was attending a routine immigration check-in at 26 Federal Plaza, Gov. Kathy Hochul said, adding that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “detained all three of them on the spot.”

“I have been clear: whether under President Biden or Donald Trump, I will work with the federal government to secure our borders and deport violent criminals who pose a real threat,” Hochul said in a statement Monday. “But ripping a mother from her children and detaining her 7-year-old daughter is cruel and unjust. It does not make anyone in New York or across the country safer.”

Federal authorities identified the mother as Martha Yolanda Lojano-Guallpa, an Ecuadorian national, saying she unlawfully entered the United States with her children in December 2022. An immigration judge has ordered them removed from the country, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said, leaving the son and daughter unnamed.

Hochul said Lojano-Guallpa and her daughter were initially taken to a facility in Texas, which DHS confirmed as the Dilley Detention Center in the southern part of the state. The governor said her administration has reached out to the department, which oversees ICE, about returning them to New York.

New York City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan and state Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, who both represent parts of Queens, said the girl and her mother were separated from the 19-year-old brother, who was being held at a detention center in New Jersey.

“We are in contact with the family and their legal counsel, the Department of Education, and government agencies at every level to do everything in our power to reunite this family,” Krishnan and Cruz said in a statement, which noted the girl attended P.S. 89 in Elmhurst.

Early Tuesday evening, Krishnan and Cruz said the girl and her mother were deported to Ecuador.

The girl is the fourth known New York City public school student whom immigration authorities have detained so far this year, according to city and state officials and the families’ attorneys. Krishnan said she is believed to be the first minor in the city who has been detained by ICE this year.

As part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, ICE agents have targeted people coming out of immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza. Last week, elected officials and community members rallied for the release of a 20-year-old public school student who was similarly taken into custody by federal agents at the building. He was also attending an immigration hearing, officials said. Two other immigrant high school students were detained at immigration court in recent months, and only one of them has been released.

In a public statement Tuesday night, Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos called the girl's deportation “heartbreaking.”

“No child or family should be uprooted from their community or feel forced to hide in the shadows,” she said. “This is a child that should be preparing to go back to school this fall, where they are cared for, valued, and — most importantly — safe.”

The city education department said in a statement that it connects detained immigrant families to legal and other support with their permission. Education officials also encouraged families to keep sending their children to school amid ramped-up federal immigration enforcement.

The mayor’s office did not immediately comment on the situation facing Lojano-Guallpa and her children. In a release Tuesday, City Hall officials announced they had filed an amicus brief in an ongoing lawsuit in the U.S. Southern District of New York challenging the federal government’s “unlawful campaign of arresting and detaining people who show up to mandatory immigration proceedings.”

“We should allow New Yorkers to feel secure to attend legal proceedings in their pursuit to obtain legal status,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams condemned the family’s detention.

“Children should be preparing for a new school year, not being ripped from their classrooms and communities,” she said in a statement.

In a statement, Krishnan and Cruz said ICE is “utilizing our courts as a means to detain, bully and terrorize people who lawfully appear for their required check-ins and hearings.”

This story has been updated with additional information.