ICE on Long Island: Roosevelt High School student Alvaro Castro Velasquez detained weeks before graduation

For months, a diploma and a blue graduation gown have sat in Superintendent Shawn Wightman’s office in the Roosevelt school district.

They belong to Alvaro Castro Velasquez, a 19-year-old high school senior who was weeks away from graduating when he was picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on his way home from grocery shopping. On June 27, instead of joining his beaming peers onstage for commencement, Castro Velasquez was in a detention facility on the other end of the country.

When news of his detainment reached his social studies teacher, Jessica Harrison, she cried.

“It's not just a number or a story,” she said. “It's somebody we love.”

Castro Velasquez, who had attended Roosevelt High School since 2022, is the first known K-12 student on Long Island to be detained by ICE since President Donald Trump announced a mass deportation campaign intended to crack down on illegal immigration.

The Guatemalan native illegally crossed the U.S. southern border at 16 but was granted a special status for unaccompanied minors escaping abandonment, said his Levittown-based attorney, Pallvi Babbar. The lawyer said the teen was granted deferred action, which in the past shielded him from deportation.

On Tuesday, a judge granted his request to be sent back to Guatemala under voluntary departure, his lawyer said.

Castro Velasquez's arrest has prompted consternation and fear among some in the Roosevelt school community. Staffers described him as dedicated, gentle and “the student that every teacher would dream to have.”

Harrison said the teen often arrived early to class in the mornings and worked for hours after school at a part-time job. Noticing she was pregnant, he opened doors for her and offered to carry things for her, she said.

“I feel that this country failed him,” she said. “It is our loss.”

In an emailed statement, an ICE spokesperson said Castro Velasquez entered the country unlawfully. The spokesperson said Castro Velasquez was “released into our country by the Biden administration” under what immigration enforcement proponents call "catch and release" — the practice of allowing immigrants to be released from detention as their cases move through the court system.

The policy, the spokesperson wrote, "allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets. This Administration is once again implementing the rule of law.”

Status in question

Castro Velasquez, who could not be reached for comment, was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents in May 2022, according to ICE. He was released to his brother on Long Island who later became his guardian, according to Babbar and a release letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Through Babbar, the teen's brother declined to comment.

Babbar said her client, whose mother is dead and whose father is not in his life, applied for “Special Immigrant Juvenile” status, a pathway to permanent residency for minors abandoned by one or both parents.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granted his petition for the designation, which on its own does not confer lawful status, Babbar said. But he was shielded from deportation because he was granted deferred action and an immigration judge in New York terminated removal proceedings, Babbar said.

Since then, Castro Velasquez had been on a yearslong waitlist to apply for a green card amid a growing backlog.

Babbar said her client had no criminal record and no removal order against him when the car he was riding in was pulled over at a random checkpoint in early June.

That same month, the Trump administration ended automatic consideration of deferred action for immigrants with special immigrant juvenile status. The administration has claimed the program has been abused by some who falsified their names and ages. Citizenship and Immigration Services also said alleged gang members “infiltrated” the program, asserting in a July report that it identified “853 known or suspected gang members” out of more than 300,000 petitions from 2013 through early 2025.

Babbar said Castro Velasquez still has deferred action status, but immigration law experts said such protection is granted at the discretion of the federal government and could be revoked, thus making the person removable.

Theo Liebmann, a professor at Hofstra Law School, addressing ICE's argument that "catch and release" allowed Castro Velasquez to be released into the community, said the phrase “makes it sound like: ‘Oh, we just take him and then let him go out into the world.’ That's not what it is.”

Unaccompanied minors are typically placed into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which tries to find a suitable sponsor, often a family member, to care for them. Under congressional direction, each child must be placed “in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child.”

Before a child is released, the sponsor must go through a background check. In some cases, a home study is required. The office also notifies ICE of unification of the children with their sponsors and provides ICE with their address and other information.

Wightman said Castro Velasquez had solid grades and was never in trouble in school.

Babbar said she teared up reading the character letters his teachers wrote in support of his case.

“It was so heartfelt to see somebody who came here, who [didn’t] speak the language, who was running from something and scared for his life, and he was able to build a life here, and in the [few] years that he was here, make that many impressions on people,” she said.

Babbar said Castro Velasquez was preyed on by the gangs in his home country.

“Nobody would make that trip from Guatemala to the U.S. unless they were in fear of their life,” she said. “It's a very harrowing journey.”

A trip to Texas

At Roosevelt High's graduation ceremony in June, Wightman — standing behind a podium inside a Hofstra University complex in Hempstead — spoke of the dozens of pathways of that year's graduating cohort, according to a video recording of the ceremony. The graduates, who sat in rows of chairs, were headed to prestigious universities, service in the U.S. armed forces, trade programs or the workforce, he said.

He did not forget Castro Velasquez, whose path was far less clear.

“Alvaro should be walking the stage beside all of you,” he told them.

The superintendent announced he would travel to Texas in July to personally place the student’s diploma in his hands. “Because no distance and no circumstance can diminish the light he brought to the school and to our community,” Wightman said.

So three weeks after graduation, Wightman said, he flew to Houston with his wife. The couple then drove north for an hour to the Joe Corley Processing Center in Conroe.

With them in the rental car were Castro Velasquez’s diploma and gown. Wightman said he also brought the 2024-25 school yearbook, a copy of the commencement program and a newsletter detailing the ceremony, with photos of embracing graduates.

Wightman recounted his trip to Newsday in recent interviews and an email. He showed a Newsday reporter photos of the exterior of the detention facility, including razor-wire fencing. Babbar, who heard of the trip via Castro Velasquez's brother, said the family was moved that Wightman made the visit.

Wightman said he had planned to “graduate” his student in a private ceremony at the Texas detention center.

“A high school diploma is an artifact of someone's life,” he said. “That's one thing that people can't take away from you and you've earned it.”

But his hopes were dashed when guards there told him he could not bring the diploma or other graduation items inside. He said he tried to plead with them, explaining the situation. A woman left to consult a supervisor but returned with the same answer. Wightman said he had to turn around to place the envelope with the items back in the car, where his wife waited.

When he went back inside, he said, he met with his student through a large glass window. He recalled seeing the teen, who had lost weight, in dark navy-blue scrubs.

Sitting in a visitor booth, Wightman recalled the bright overhead fluorescent light giving off a “sterile glow." He said he strained to get his voice across the drilled-out holes to reach Castro Velasquez on the other side. The acoustics were muffled and distorted by the thick glass, and they had to repeat themselves to be heard.

During that hourlong conversation, Wightman asked him whether he had messages for anyone back home.

“I asked him if he had a girlfriend,” Wightman recounted. “He laughed and said no.”

Castro Velasquez told him he had worked part-time as a valet in Franklin Square and hoped to study business, perhaps at Nassau Community College, Wightman said.

When the visit ended, Wightman said, he walked out feeling angry and powerless.

“It's a prison,” he said. “I felt like I was helpless. I couldn't help him with anything.”

'Done' with being isolated

Babbar said she has not been able to speak to her client except during virtual court conferences, as the phone line into the detention center is "impossible" to get through. She said she communicated with her client through his brother, whom she believed Castro Velasquez can call.

Babbar said the teen had considered voluntary departure for weeks and in a court hearing Tuesday asked to be sent back to Guatemala, even though he has no living relatives there.

“It's easy for me sitting at home and living my life to say: ‘Oh, we should fight this case,’ ” Babbar said. “But I'm not the one sitting in a detention center in unsanitary and inhumane conditions. I'm not the one that's uncomfortable. I'm not the one isolated from the world and everybody I know.”

For the teen, who has been in ICE custody for more than three months, "he's done with being isolated in the facility," she said Tuesday. 

Newsday's Bart Jones contributed to this story.