ICE on Long Island: Roosevelt student Alvaro Castro Velazquez, detained since June, agrees to be sent back to Guatemala
Alvaro Castro Velasquez. Credit: Courtesy Shawn Wightman
A Roosevelt student who was detained in the spring — weeks away from his high school graduation — has agreed to be sent back to his home country, his lawyer said Tuesday.
Alvaro Castro Velasquez, 19, has been in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since early June after he was detained on his way home from grocery shopping.
His Levittown-based attorney, Pallvi Babbar, said Castro Velasquez, who illegally crossed the southern border in 2022 as an unaccompanied minor from Guatemala, requested voluntary departure in a court hearing Tuesday.
"He’s frustrated and done," Babbar said. "He’s done with being isolated in the facility."
Castro Velasquez’s request was granted by a judge, and Babbar said the teen must leave the country by Oct. 14.
"For him, getting out was his priority. And he's getting out now, so that's a good thing for him and his head," she said. "But I don't think he recognizes what hardships he’s about to face."
Castro Velasquez, whose mother is dead and whose father is not in his life, has no living relatives in Guatemala. After he was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents in 2022 and placed into the custody of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, he was released to his brother in Roosevelt. His brother later became his guardian.
He attended Roosevelt High School since 2022 and was about to graduate on June 27.
Taking voluntary departure means Castro Velasquez will not face the reentry penalty that typically comes with a deportation. If he were to be deported, Castro Velasquez would be banned from reentering the United States for 10 years, Babbar said.
Juvenile status
Castro Velasquez, who could not be reached for comment, had been granted "Special Immigrant Juvenile” status, a pathway to permanent residency for minors abandoned by one or both parents. He was also granted deferred action, which had shielded him from deportation.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. A spokesperson for the agency has previously said that Castro Velasquez entered the U.S. unlawfully and was allowed to remain under a policy known as "catch and release," in which immigrants are released from detention as their cases move through the court system.
"This Administration is once again implementing the rule of law," the spokesperson has said.
Babbar said she’s hoping to get Castro Velasquez released from the Texas detention center so he could return to New York to say goodbye to his family, teachers and friends back in Roosevelt, though that may not happen.
"I don't know if they're going to allow that yet," she said. "It seems that they're going to try to send him directly from Texas."
Jessica Harrison, a social studies teacher at Roosevelt High School who said her former student was kind and hardworking, called the latest development "heartbreaking."
"I feel like he was put in a lose-lose situation," she said Tuesday. "I can't say it's the wrong move. I can say it's cruelty that he was put in that situation. It's not justice. It's cruel that a young person with just so much to give was put in that situation."
Roosevelt schools Superintendent Shawn Wightman, who has never visited Guatemala, said he plans to travel to the Central American country during a school break to hand his student’s diploma to him.
“It would be a journey of closure and completion,” he said Wednesday morning. “Also, it's more optimistic with that too.”
Wightman said he hopes Castro Velasquez will find a way to legally return to New York where his family and friends are.
“I just want him to live a productive life and to have the opportunities that everybody else's children have here in the United States,” he said.
Dandan Zou covers education for Newsday. Previously, she worked for a community newspaper in Maryland and a personal finance magazine in Washington, D.C.
