Venezuelan public school student in NY detained at immigration court

The New York City public schools chancellor is encouraging parents to continue sending their children to school after a 20-year-old high school student from Venezuela was detained in New York City immigration court.

“New York City Public Schools stands firmly with our students, including our immigrant students, and our schools will always be safe spaces for them,” Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in a statement on social media. “While this incident did not occur on school grounds, we want to reassure our families: We will continue to speak out and advocate for the safety, dignity, and rights of all of our students.”

The 20-year-old, Dylan, is the only known New York City public school student arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Donald Trump’s second term, according to Nicole Brownstein, a city Department of Education spokesperson. Through a lawyer, Dylan’s family members asked that his last name be withheld because they fear retaliation from the government.

His case is also unique because he was detained at an immigration courthouse — a rare location for ICE to make arrests, according to local immigration attorneys. The nonprofit newsroom Chalkbeat was the first to report Dylan’s arrest. Dylan attended ELLIS Prep, a public international school in the Bronx serving immigrant students who are over the age of 15 and who have been in the country for less than a year.

An applicant for asylum, Dylan attended a court hearing with his mother last Wednesday morning at the immigration court at 290 Broadway, where the judge dismissed his deportation case, according to the New York Legal Assistance Group, whose attorneys are representing the student. After Dylan and his mother exited the courtroom, and on the way to the elevator, three immigration agents in plainclothes stopped him, asked for his documents, and then placed him in handcuffs, according to Power Malu, a local immigration activist who spoke with Dylan’s mother. Malu and the New York Legal Assistance Group said Dylan had no known criminal arrests or convictions.

“Dylan entered the United States with permission to seek asylum, and his detention robs him of the opportunity to seek that relief with the full protections offered to him under the law,” Sara Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the New York Legal Assistance Group, said in a statement. “He works, goes to school, has friends and was fully complying with immigration proceedings. All this does is disrupt communities and unnecessarily put people in chaotic and potentially harmful situations.”

Immigration lawyers say the dismissal of an immigration case usually means the federal government is no longer trying to deport the individual — but that wasn’t the case for Dylan. Reports have surfaced this week of ICE agents detaining individuals in immigration courts in cities across the country, including Miami, Las Vegas and Seattle. In several cases, immigration judges had just dismissed their cases before the individuals were detained by ICE agents, according to the media reports.

Marie Ferguson, an ICE spokesperson, did not respond to a request for comment about Dylan’s case. However, in a comment on Friday, she said those detained at immigration court would be subject to expedited removal, a process by which individuals can be summarily removed from the country without hearings before immigration judges. On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order directing the expansion of the use of expedited removal.

Ferguson said if an individual has a valid claim of “credible fear” of returning to their home country, the person would continue in “immigration proceedings.” But, she added in a statement, “if no valid claim is found, aliens will be subject to a swift deportation.”

Dylan entered the U.S. more than a year ago and was placed in expedited removal proceedings last Wednesday after he was arrested, according to a DHS official. He is currently being held in a Pennsylvania detention center, according to Rodriguez.

“Most aliens who illegally entered the United States within the past two years are subject to expedited removals,” Ferguson said in a statement. “[President Joe] Biden ignored this legal fact and chose to release millions of illegal aliens, including violent criminals, into the country with a notice to appear before an immigration judge. ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been.”

Gothamist observed two ICE officers stationed outside the fifth-floor courtroom, and several more ICE agents downstairs around noon last Wednesday, the day Dylan was taken into custody. Immigration lawyers say it’s extremely rare for ICE to visit courthouses, and for ICE agents to detain individuals at court hearings.

Deborah Lee, attorney-in-charge at the Legal Aid Society's immigration law unit, said ICE has previously arrested individuals at immigration court in “isolated” situations, when individuals had criminal histories or were suspected to not comply with court orders.

The ICE presence at courtrooms comes as the Trump administration seeks to crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration.

The day Trump took office, the Department of Homeland Security issued a directive allowing ICE officers to conduct arrests at so-called “protected” and previously off-limits locations, including schools. The next day, ICE officials also issued guidance allowing agents to conduct arrests at courthouses.

The U.S. Supreme Court has also allowed the Trump administration to end a form of deportation protection called Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Venezuelans in the country. The Department of Homeland Security has also sent out emails to Venezuelans and others in recent weeks, saying their authorization to remain in the country has been revoked and they must leave the country immediately.

An estimated 32,000 immigrants from Venezuela live in the New York City area, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The Department of Education does not track the immigration status or home countries of public school students.

Unaccompanied minors, children who arrive in the U.S. without parents, are also increasingly appearing in immigration courts without lawyers due to Trump administration funding cuts for their legal representation.

Brittany Triggs, an immigration attorney with the Erie County Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project, said she also saw six ICE officers stationed at the Buffalo immigration courthouse last Wednesday, which she hasn’t seen in the past six years she’s been working for the association.

Lee and Malu said they worried that ICE’s enforcement actions on Wednesday would also dissuade individuals from going to immigration court.

“By engaging in these enforcement activities at immigration court, it is going to scare people from wanting to go to immigration court and follow through with the process there,” Lee said. “ People are afraid now that if they go into the courthouse, they will be detained and summarily removed.”

Malu said he spoke to Dylan’s mother and connected her with lawyers at a help session he regularly hosts for immigrants at Metro Baptist Church with his organization Artist Athletes Activists. He said she was “hyperventilating” and crying, fearing what would happen to her son.

Brownstein, the education department spokesperson, said ICE had not arrested anyone at NYC public schools under Trump’s second term. Ferguson, the ICE spokesperson, did not respond to a request for comment about whether ICE was planning any such arrests.

When ICE officers visit a school, security guards are supposed to alert the school principal, who is supposed to seek legal counsel about whether the officer can enter the building, according to education department protocols. School staff are instructed to not provide any information about individual students, family members or employees “under any circumstances,” according to the guidance.

Aviles-Ramos, the school chancellor, commented in her social media post: “Our hearts go out to the student who was detained by ICE, and we are deeply saddened for their family.”

This story has been updated with additional information.