A six-year-old girl and her mother, who were seeking asylum in the United States, have been deported to Ecuador after being arrested in New York City and held in immigration detention for a week.
The second-grade student went to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in appointment with her mother and older brother in lower Manhattan on August 12 when they were detained by federal agents.
New York officials confirmed that the young girl and her mother, who had been living in Queens, were deported on Tuesday morning. The girl’s 19-year-old brother is still locked up in an immigration detention center in New Jersey.
The case of another New York City public school student being targeted has drawn renewed scrutiny and outrage over the practice of arresting immigrants at routine check-in appointments and court hearings.
The child’s arrest appears to be the first known ICE arrest of a New Yorker under the age of 18 during Donald Trump’s administration.
“This is cruel. And I say to those who did this: ‘where is your humanity?’” NY Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement after the family was deported.
“President Trump, you said you were going after the ‘worst of the worst.’ You think she’s really the ‘worst of the worst?’” she said. “I want to demand how you can possibly say yes.”
The Independent has requested comment from the Department of Homeland Security. In a previous statement, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the family had final orders for their removal and encouraged undocumented immigrants to self-deport.
“If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return,” she said.
The Ecuadorian family sought asylum without legal permission after arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in December 2022. The woman, identified as Martha, had her asylum claims denied last year, but continued to attend ICE check-ins without issue.
Her child had attended P.S. 89 elementary school in Queens. In a letter to ICE pleading for the girl’s release, the school’s principal called her “a kind, respectful, and dedicated young lady” whose “unexpected removal will cause significant disruption to her learning and will likely have a deep emotional impact on her classmates and our entire school community.”
Last week, the family was arrested during a check-in appointment at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, home to ICE officers, immigration courts and a makeshift detention facility at the center of a federal lawsuit over its conditions.
Martha’s 19-year-old son was sent to that holding center, and then moved to Delaney Hall in Newark.
ICE’s online detainee locator system had previously shown that Martha was being held inside one of the country’s few family detention centers in Texas. The system then noted she was in Washington, D.C., on Monday. The system no longer has a record of her whereabouts.
“There is no greater depravity than separating a family and deporting a 6 year-old child two weeks before she is supposed to start school,” read a joint statement from NY state Assemblymember Catalina Cruz and New York City Council Member Shekar Krishnan.
“It is a shameful stain on our country's history and conscience,” they added.
Protesters have railed against the targeting of New York City students in recent weeks, following a wave of arrests at courthouses and ICE check-ins, with Manhattan fast becoming the nation’s capital for such arrests.
In June and July, agents with ICE’s New York City field office arrested 48 children, according to data shared with news organization The City, compiled by the Deportation Data Project.
Dylan Lopez Contreras, a 20-year-old student from Venezuela, was enrolled at Ellis Prep. Academy in the Bronx, part of the public school system’s programs serving older immigrants learning English.
He was arrested in May immediately after his appearance in immigration court on his asylum claims.
Earlier this month, advocates rallied for the release of Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, who was enrolled at Brooklyn Frontiers High School, a transfer school that serves many older immigrant students.
Diallo, who is originally from Guinea, was at least the third public school student arrested by ICE agents this year, according to city officials and attorneys for their families. He is currently detained at Pike County Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania, according to ICE records.
As schools prepare for the upcoming year, communities across the U.S. are reeling as families are ripped apart by ICE arrests, and sent to countries their young children don’t know.
In Los Angeles, the county’s school districts are putting new protective measures in place to brace for ICE raids, while New York officials are suing ICE to prevent courthouse arrests that have turned routine, legal appearances into what one judge has called “deportation roulette.”
An ICE policy — abandoned by the Trump administration — sought to prevent courthouse arrests from creating a “palpable fear that disincentivizes people from appearing for their hearings,” according to a lawsuit filed by civil rights groups against the practice.
“But in the first few days of the Trump administration, defendants repealed those policies, exposing individuals who properly appear for their hearings, including to seek asylum and other relief, to the imminent threat of arrest and indefinite detention,” the lawsuit stated.
