US deports teen soccer star to Honduras days after his high school graduation

A teenage student and soccer stand-out was arrested by immigration authorities four days after his high school graduation ceremony in Ohio earlier this month, and deported to Honduras this week, his family has said.

Emerson Colindres, 19, had no criminal record and was attending a regularly scheduled appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in Cincinnati when he was detained on 4 June, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

His parents told the newspaper he was deported on Wednesday to a country he has not lived in since he was eight years old.

“He’s never done anything to anybody, he hasn’t committed any type of crime and he’s always done things the right way,” his mother, Ada Bell Baquedano-Amador, told the outlet.

“How is my son going to make it over there? He doesn’t know anything and the country where we come from is very insecure.”

Teachers and teammates from his soccer team at Gilbert A Dater high school, where Colindres was a standout athlete, joined protests at the Butler county jail, where he was detained until he was moved to another Ice facility in Louisiana this week.

Bryan Williams, coach at the Cincy Galaxy soccer club where Colindres also played, told NBC News: “Sadly, he’s not the only one. I think there are a lot of Emersons in the same situation right now.

“They’re all the same story, someone who was here doing everything they were asked, trying to make a better life for themselves and their family.”

High school and college students have increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Administration officials insist that only criminals and those with adjudicated final orders of removal are being targeted. Recent data shows a surge in people with no criminal history being targeted. Being in the US without legal status is a civil offense, not a crime.

However, a judge had issued a final removal order for Colindres and his family in 2023 after their application for asylum was denied, nine years after they entered the country without documentation.

“If you are in the country illegally and a judge has ordered you to be removed, that is precisely what will happen,” Tricia McLaughlin, homeland security department assistant secretary of public affairs, told NBC in a statement.

Raids by Ice agents have escalated as administration officials have called for a minimum of 3,000 immigration arrests daily.