NYC high school student freed after 10 months in ICE detention

NEW YORK — A high school student from the Bronx who was arrested at an immigration courthouse nearly a year ago — a moment that foreshadowed a stark escalation of President Donald Trump’s deportation tactics — has been released from federal custody.

Dylan Lopez Contreras, whose arrest was the first widely known instance of a public school student in the city being detained by federal agents since Trump returned to office, was freed before dawn on Wednesday, according to his legal team. A group of immigration advocates traveled overnight to pick him up from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania.

In a telephone interview, Lopez Contreras said that his release from detention felt like a dream.

“I still can’t believe that I’m out,” he said in Spanish. “There was a moment that I never thought it would happen, but wow — it caught me by surprise.”

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Lopez Contreras and his mother, Raiza Contreras, expressed gratitude for the people who worked to release him, including the staff of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who invited her to this year’s State of the Union address to speak about Lopez Contreras’ detention.

“All glory and honor belong to God, who opened doors and made the impossible possible,” Contreras said in a statement provided through the New York Legal Assistance Group, which provides legal services to immigrants and is representing Lopez Contreras.

“I am grateful to everyone who, in one way or another, played a part in offering support and strength, and who was always there,” she said. “Very soon, my son will be back with his siblings and me — it is both a relief and a blessing.”

Lopez Contreras was the second person from the New York City region to be freed from immigration detention this week after having spent months in custody. On Monday, Leqaa Kordia, a New Jersey woman who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University in 2024, was released from a federal immigration detention center in Texas where she had been held for more than a year.

Before his detention, Lopez Contreras had been attending Ellis Preparatory Academy, a school in the Bronx that enrolls migrant students who are considered too old to start at a traditional high school. He enrolled after leaving Venezuela in 2024 with his family and was admired for going to school while working as a delivery driver to help support his family.

The circumstances of his release were not immediately clear, according to Chloe Chik, a spokesperson for the New York Legal Assistance Group.

Power Malu and Candice Braun, cofounders of ROCC NYC, an immigrant advocacy organization, accompanied Lopez Contreras after his release. Malu said that Lopez Contreras had been released on his own recognizance and that he was wearing an ankle monitor and needed to comply with routine immigration check-ins.

Officials with the Department of Homeland Security said that Lopez Contreras had entered the United States illegally under the Biden administration.

“He will receive full due process,” the officials wrote in a statement. “If a judge finds he has no right to remain in the U.S., he will be swiftly removed.”

“Our city is overjoyed that Dylan has finally been released from detention and will be back home with his loved ones in the Bronx,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City said in a prepared statement. “What should have been a time for him to focus on finishing high school instead became 10 long months of isolation.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York urged the federal government to release other migrants who had been separated from their families and said that she had demanded the release of Lopez Contreras when she met with Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, this month.

Lopez Contreras was 20 years old at the time of his arrest in May and turned 21 in detention. He was arrested by ICE agents at a lower Manhattan courthouse after going there for a mandatory hearing. Such detention tactics by federal immigration authorities became common in the spring and summer.

“Nothing can undo the injustice of denying Dylan even a modicum of due process, stealing his liberty and personal autonomy, and snatching away the precious time, education and experiences he’s been forced to miss for nearly a year of his young life,” Kate Fetrow, a lawyer who represented Lopez Contreras, said in a statement. “His release today is a momentous step in the right direction as we continue to fight to restore justice for Dylan and his family.”

After Lopez Contreras’ detention, his legal team struggled to free him as more arrests followed of school-age students, some as young as 6.

On June 4, Derlis Snaider Chusin Toaquiza, who was 19 at the time and an 11th grader from Ecuador at Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, was arrested and sent to a Texas detention center before being released on bond six weeks later.

Joselyn Chipantiza-Sisalema, who was 20 and also from Ecuador, was arrested June 24, sent to a Louisiana detention center and released three weeks later.

Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, who was also 20 at the time and had emigrated from Guinea and was attending Brooklyn Frontiers High School, was arrested Aug. 4 and sent to a Pennsylvania jail before being released in November. Later that month, the Trump administration arrested and quickly deported a 6-year-old girl and her mother, while the child’s brother was put in ICE detention.

Schumer celebrated the release of Lopez Contreras and said that he had worked to free him after talking with his mother in February. He said the actions of ICE officials had torn apart many families.

“Dylan did everything right,” Schumer said in a statement. “He entered legally, worked to support his family and enrolled in school, and he should have never been detained like this.”