A group of House Democrats is demanding that the departments of Homeland Security and Education provide answers for the deportation of K-12 students by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
According to an investigation published last week by The Guardian, since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, “nearly 2,350 kids under the age of 18, including 36 infants, have been booked into immigration detention centers around the country.”
In a letter sent Friday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and 10 other New York lawmakers wrote that “ICE’s targeting of not only adults without criminal convictions, but also children and families, negates the administration’s stated policy of going after the ‘worst of the worst’ for deportation proceedings.”
They added that many of the individuals targeted “do not even have open orders of removal in their family’s immigration proceedings.”
The lawmakers highlighted five K-12 students in New York City who have been arrested by ICE over the past year.
These include Dylan Lopez Contreras, a Bronx high school student who was arrested in May while showing up for a legal asylum court hearing. Chalkbeatreported that Lopez Contreras had arrived in the US last year after making a perilous journey from Venezuela and was allowed to remain in the country while he awaited his court date.
At that court appearance, he was detained without the ability to consult a lawyer and was then shuttled in and out of several detention facilities in at least five different states. According to the lawmakers, he is currently being held in Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, where the ACLU says “those in detention have endured insufficient medical and mental healthcare, grossly inadequate access to non-English language services, and rampant discrimination.”
The lawmakers also highlighted the arrest of a 6-year-old named Dayra, who was arrested in August alongside her mother, Martha, and deported back to Ecuador. Martha’s 19-year-old daughter was also taken into ICE custody, but not deported with her family. Meanwhile, her 16-year-old public high school student was left in the care of her 21-year-old brother.
Other students mentioned by the lawmakers include Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, a 20-year-old legal asylum-seeker from Guinea, and Derlis Chusen, a 19-year-old high school student from Ecuador, who was arrested outside a court hearing and taken to an immigration facility in Texas, where he was released on what the lawmakers called an “exorbitant” $20,000 bond.
As the lawmakers noted, “Not only did these students have no criminal convictions, they made every attempt to comply with their immigration hearings and ICE check-ins. Despite that, they were held in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, and were transported far away from their families, lawyers, and school communities.”
Joselyn Chipantiza-Sisalema, a 20-year-old student from Ecuador, told The City that while she was held for 10 days at the notorious detention center at 26 Federal Plaza: “We had to beg the people working there that they gave us something to eat, they didn’t even give us water. Sometimes a few cookies they’d throw in there. A human being doesn’t deserve to be treated that way… it was a horrible thing I wouldn’t wish on anyone. They had us in there like animals.”
These are just a few of the dozens of students in New York City who have been deported under the Trump administration. According to numbers from the Deportation Data Project reported on by The City, ICE’s New York City field office, which also covers Long Island and some areas north of the city, arrested 48 children in June and July alone, with 32 of them deported as of August 19.
“Poor conditions and inadequate care in immigration detention not only cause immediate harm to a child’s health, they can have long-term physical and mental consequences, impacting their studies and their adult life,” the lawmakers wrote. “There is no doubt that these experiences are deeply traumatic for the children and young people detained, but also for their classmates and educators, regardless of immigration status. Exposing K-12 students to the trauma of immigration enforcement is certain to have social and economic consequences for their entire communities.”
The Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that states cannot constitutionally deny children access to a free K-12 public education based on their immigration status, including if they are undocumented.
The lawmakers demanded that DHS provide a list of all the students it has arrested since January 20, 2025, and information about how students in immigration detention are receiving education.
“It is impossible to reconcile ICE’s narrative of making communities safer by going after ‘the worst of the worst’ when the majority of those currently in ICE detention, almost 70%, have no criminal convictions, according to data published by the agency,” the lawmakers said. “Students like Dylan and Dayra represent the very best of this country. Their cases remind us of the irreparable harm that this administration’s reckless mass deportation policies cause our students and communities.”
