Emerson Colindres is now in Honduras, a country he last saw as an 8-year-old, immigration attorneys confirmed to WVXU Wednesday.
Colindres, a recent graduate of Dater High School well known for his soccer skills, was detained by Homeland Security agents June 4 during a routine check-in at the department's Blue Ash office. He was held on an immigration detainer at the Butler County Jail until early Tuesday morning, when Butler County Sheriffs deputies transported him to an airport in Michigan. He was then flown to an ICE facility in Louisiana before boarding an early Wednesday flight to Honduras.
Attorneys with Catholic Charities of Southwestern Ohio are representing Colindres. The organization released a statement confirming his deportation Wednesday afternoon.
"Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio received confirmation this afternoon that our client, Emerson Colindres, has been deported to Honduras," the statement reads. "It's upsetting how aggressively and secretively this enforcement process has been applied to a non-criminal, young person who came to this country when he was just 8 years old. We will continue to support and pray for Emerson and his family, as they seek to be whole again."
Colindres' mother, Ada Bell Baquedano Amador, has said the family came to Cincinnati in 2014 to escape gang violence and extortion. She has pleaded with authorities to release her son.
"The only thing he ever wanted in this country was opportunity," she told a crowd outside the Butler County Jail earlier this month. "I feel a lot of fear about what is going to happen to Emerson."
Ignite Peace Program Director Samantha Searls has been working closely with the family. She says Amador was given no details about her son's whereabouts as he was relocated.
"She was not given any information about what flight he would be on or even what city he would land in until Emerson called her from Honduras," Searls said.
That call came Wednesday afternoon. Searls says Colindres faces big challenges in Honduras, but will get some help there in the short term.
"There's been communication with a team of amazing volunteers who help resettle deportees," she says. "So Emerson was picked up at the airport and has accommodations for a few days as he tries to figure out his next steps."
The family applied for asylum after arriving in the U.S., but was denied by immigration courts in 2023. They were on a kind of supervised release until Colindres's detention. Lately, ICE has been arresting people who come to routine appointments related to that program.
"That's exactly what happened to Emerson," Searls says, "So people are afraid to go to their ICE appointments. People are just trying to follow the process and do everything right."
ICE did not respond to specific questions about Colindres' whereabouts or his case. A brief statement sent by the agency prior to his deportation said it routinely relocates detainees for capacity, security or logistical reasons.
Attorneys representing Colindres called for a reappraisal of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies.
"Embracing the moral framework of our U.S. Catholic bishops, we reaffirm our call for an immigration system that upholds both the rule of law and the principles of human dignity and mercy," their statement reads. "When the enforcement of a law attacks human life and dignity, the integrity of a family, and the vitality of the community to be served by that law, then we should consider whether mercy from the prescribed enforcement is truly the more just course of action."
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