For 19-year-old Emerson Colindres, it was supposed to be a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It turned out to be a trap. He never returned home.
Colindres, who came to the United States with his family more than a decade ago to escape the violence in their native Honduras, was detained by ICE on June 4, just days after the talented student and soccer player graduated high school in Cincinnati. Colindres, whose teammates said was one of the greatest players they met on the field, dreamed of continuing his sports career and hoped to attend a university. He did not have a criminal record, according to the Butler County Sheriff’s Office.
In the span of two weeks, Colindres went from celebrating his graduation to being detained by ICE to then being deported to a country where he has not lived since he was 8 years old.
He is not the only law-abiding high school student who has been targeted by ICE. Immigration enforcement around the country has also swept up students in New York City, as well as in Milford, Massachusetts.
“Sadly, he’s not the only one. I think there are a lot of Emersons in the same situation right now,” Bryan Williams, Colindres’ coach at the Cincy Galaxy soccer club, said ahead of the young man’s deportation. “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, and now they’re being detained somewhere.”
While President Donald Trump has long promised to enact mass deportations, the administration initially said it would focus on criminals and bad actors who were in the country illegally.
But as pressure to increase deportations has grown, young people without criminal records — including teens like Colindres who have lived in the U.S. since they were children — have been caught up in immigration enforcement.
Colindres’ arrest did not go unnoticed.
Protests erupted in the Cincinnati area and outside the detention center in Butler County, Ohio, where Colindres was, for a time, being held. His coach, teachers, classmates and teammates — all called for the release of a beloved teenager who they said was unfairly ripped away from their tight-knit community.
On Wednesday, Colindres was deported.
“It’s devastating,” Johanna Froelicher, a middle school teacher who had Colindres as a student, told NBC News. “But we aren’t giving up on him.”
Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, told NBC News “we are delivering on President Trump’s and the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens to make America safe.”
McLaughlin said that during the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, 75% of immigrants arrested had convictions or pending charges. According to reporting from Reuters, the top charges making up 39% of that total were traffic offenses or immigration-related crimes.
A senior spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News that immigrants arrested during routine check-ins, “had executable final orders of removal by an immigration judge and had not complied with that order. If you are in the country illegally and a judge has ordered you to be removed, that is precisely what will happen.”
After he was arrested, Colindres was spirited out to the Butler County jail, where Sheriff Richard Jones said about 450 immigrant detainees were being held after the sheriff’s office agreed to partner with the Trump administration.
On June 17, Colindres was taken from the jail and “none of us, including his family or legal team, have been informed where he was taken,” Froelicher said ahead of his deportation.
Jones said that Colindres never had any legal issues, and that he was given due process on his ability to stay in the U.S. through his immigration case. “He had a court order from a judge to be deported, and he was deported,” he said.
Williams said he was shocked by the turn of events.
“These are your friends and neighbors,” Williams said. “They make your community what it is, and then one day they’re just gone.”
Colindres arrived in the U.S. in 2014 with his mother and sister at a time when many Central American families were fleeing gang violence and extreme poverty in their home countries.
“In Honduras, families have no security,” Colindres’ mother, Ada Bell Baquedano Amador, said in Spanish. “It’s a very complicated situation.”
Seemingly safe in the U.S., her family filed for asylum and settled in Cincinnati. And while they waited for their immigration case to play out, they started rebuilding their lives.
Colindres was a gifted student and “and did amazing academically,” said Froelicher, the middle school teacher who is now a family friend and supporter.
When he wasn’t hitting the books, Colindres was on the soccer pitch and quickly became a star player at a local soccer club. “He’s continued to be beloved by anyone who came in contact with him,” Froelicher said.
Baquedano Amador said she is so grateful to have Colindres as her son.
“As a mom, sometimes I don’t even have words for how much I thank God for Emerson,” she said. “I’m so proud of him.”
The family’s hopes for a future in the U.S. took a hit after an immigration judge denied their asylum application and in 2023 they were given a final order of removal, Baquedano Amador said.
During the Biden administration, immigration officials were ordered to exercise discretion on a case-by-case basis and to prioritize deportation for immigrants with criminal convictions who were a threat to national or public safety.
So instead of immediate deportation, Baquedano Amador was given an ankle monitor and ordered to check in with ICE.
But after Trump took office in January, ICE began targeting immigrants with and without criminal histories, as well as those who entered the country legally through Biden-era programs and those with pending asylum cases.
When Colindres came of age, he too was given a schedule to check in with ICE and told he too would soon have to don an ankle monitor, his mother said.
Williams said to boost the morale of his star player, he started going with Colindres to his ICE check-in appointments. And June 4, he also brought along his wife and son.
But Colindres was not allowed to return home that day, in a pattern seen around the nation of immigrants showing up for what were once routine appointments and being taken into ICE custody for deportation.
“They took him out of the building in handcuffs,” Williams said. “My son got to see him and give him a hug and tell him he loved him. But one of his good friends was in handcuffs being taken away and he doesn’t know if he’s ever going to see him again.”
McLaughlin said in a statement that Colindres had a final order of removal from 2023 and that “if you are in the country illegally and a judge has ordered you to be removed, that is precisely what will happen.”
Froelicher said Colindres and his family are not the kind of migrants the Trump administration should be targeting.
“He and his family have literally done every single thing that they have been asked,” Froelicher said. “They have complied with everything because they’re just such good people. They truly want to be here and they wanted to do things the right way.”
“This is not just about policy,” Froelicher added. “This is about human lives. These are real people with dreams and aspirations.”
Colindres’ soccer teammates said they can’t picture celebrating their graduations without him.
“He is one of my closest friends,” said 18-year-old Alejandro Pepole, who said he has known Colindres for about 10 years. “Emerson has always been a very funny guy. I never saw him in a bad mood. Every time we hung out on or off the field, he was always uplifting people’s moods and he always had a smile on his face. He was overall just a very good person and what he’s going through right now just isn’t right.”
Pepole said Colindres was an inspiration on the soccer field.
Colindres, he said, “can just do everything as a player. He wins us games. He’s like the main goal scorer. He controls the game. And he’s just an overall good team leader as well.”
And Colindres was ambitious, his friends said.
“He had a dream to play at the next level in soccer and eventually play professionally,” Preston Robinson, 18, said. “You could tell by the amount of effort he put in and how good he was, it was definitely possible for him. We were trying to help him get to the next level for soccer, no matter what it took.”
Robinson said he was shocked when Colindres was arrested.
“He was going there expecting to just have a check-in, like he was supposed to be doing, and then they took him away,” he said. “It was almost like he got trapped, which just doesn’t seem fair.”
