Sara Lopez Garcia, SCCC honors student, back in Colombia after ICE arrest

An honors student whose arrest by ICE provoked outrage on the Suffolk County Community College campus has been deported to Colombia after more than two months in jail.

Sara Lopez Garcia, 20, said she and her mother were flown out of Louisiana on a Colombia Air Force plane with about 150 immigrants late Thursday, landing in the capital city of Bogota. She took another plane the next day to Bucaramanga.

She’s bitter she was detained amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown even though she said she had legal status in the United States but plans to forge ahead — even studying online to finish her degree at Suffolk.

"I'm happy to be here in Colombia ... so I can see my family and have my freedom," she said in a telephone interview from Bucaramanga.

"I miss New York, and I miss my friends, and I feel like I left something of me over there," she said. "But also I’m just disappointed with America. It was illegal what they did to me."

Lopez Garcia was deported along with her mother, Viviana Garcia Gomez. Her younger brother, 17, was left behind on Long Island since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents did not arrest him, apparently because he is a minor. He is staying in Suffolk County with a custodian legally appointed by his mother.

Agents arrested her after raiding the family home in Mastic on May 21, looking for someone else, Lopez Garcia said.

Her deportation was denounced Monday by the president of the college’s faculty association, who contended the model student is the exact type of immigrant the United States should be welcoming.

"It’s just so wrong," said Dante Morelli. "These are individuals who come here who are working to create opportunities for themselves and their families. ... They’re not here to take anything away from anyone or cause crime."

"I hope Sara’s story is not repeated on our campus or on any of the college campuses here in New York or across the country," he added.

Lopez Garcia was the first known SUNY student in New York State to be detained in the escalating immigration sweeps, SUNY officials said. She had a 3.9 GPA, was a peer mentor and was working on a school project for a nonprofit that helps women who are victims of domestic violence.

ICE has not responded to messages seeking comment.

Lopez Garcia came to the United States at age 15 with her mother and brother on tourist visas. She says she obtained special immigrant juvenile legal status in the United States that, according to immigration attorneys, typically leads to a green card. She already had a legitimate work permit and social security card and had no criminal record.

The special juvenile status, granted to young people who were abused, neglected or abandoned by at least one of their parents, typically shields them from deportation, immigration attorneys said. But President Donald Trump ended that protection this year for new applicants and may be enforcing it retroactively, attorneys said.

Lopez Garcia said the Colombian Air Force gave her food and a backpack full of supplies while the local Red Cross treated her and the other immigrants to chicken, empanadas and free hotel rooms in Bogota since they arrived exhausted and late at night.

In Bucaramanga, she was reunited with her fiance, Santiago Ruiz Castilla, who was a fellow Suffolk Community College student and said he also had special immigrant juvenile status. He decided to return to Colombia in July after Lopez Garcia opted for voluntary deportation rather than spend weeks or months in jail fighting to be freed amid what Trump has pledged will be the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history.

In Colombia, Lopez Garcia plans to continue with her studies at Suffolk Community College online and hopes to graduate in December, she said. Private donors have offered to pay for her tuition for the fall semester, she said.

Lopez Garcia said she hasn’t ruled out trying to return to the United States someday, but "right now I just want to stay here in Colombia. I want to work here. I want to build my life here."

She said she will probably get over her anger over her deportation. "I don't keep bad things in my heart," she said. "I easily forgive."