HARTFORD, Conn. _ An immigration judge has granted asylum for 18-year-old Mario Aguilar, a New Haven, Conn., high school student who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in September.
Aguilar says he fled Guatemala alone two years ago to escape death threats from a local gang. After living in New Haven for two years as an undocumented immigrant, he was picked up by ICE at the Milford Courthouse in September. ULA, along with Wilbur Cross High School students and faculty, held a rally on Dec. 23 in New Haven to protest Aguilar's detention.
Activists from Unidad Latina en Accion said a judge granted Aguilar's asylum request Monday evening.
"What's so jarring is that he was here one day and gone the next," said Principal Edith Johnson. "He's a regular teenager, a young man who wants to be in school ... but his spirit is being broken."
In August, Aguilar was arrested and charged with driving under the influence after hitting a parked car on his way home from work. Aguilar said he was trying to pick up his cellphone, which had slid off his dashboard, but police said he was under the influence.
Ben Haldeman, one of Aguilar's lawyers from the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, said officers never tested the student's sobriety.
"It doesn't make any sense to us," he said.
Several weeks later, Aguilar went to the Milford Courthouse to deal with the charges. ICE detained him there, and sent him to an adult detention facility in Bristol, Massachusetts, where he has lived for the past four months.
Charla Nich, a member of Unidad Latina en Accion, said Haldeman is currently traveling to Massachusetts, as Aguilar's legal team in concerned "the feds might try to appeal" and keep him detained.
