A public high school student from The Bronx who was arrested during an immigration court appearance has been released from federal custody after nearly 10 months inside a Pennsylvania detention center.
The arrest of Dylan Lopez Contreras, considered to be the first New York City public school student detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, previewed the Trump administration’s new tactic of arresting immigrants inside courthouses as they left their hearings.
“Very soon, my son will be back with his siblings and me — it is both a relief and a blessing,” his mother Raiza Contreras said in a statement through the New York Legal Assistance Group.
Contreras — who was 20 years old when he was arrested and turned 21 while in detention — was enrolled at Ellis Preparatory Academy in The Bronx, which supports immigrant students considered too old to start at a traditional high school.
“What should have been a time for him to focus on finishing high school instead became 10 long months of isolation, after he was taken into custody at what was supposed to be a routine immigration hearing last May,” said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“Throughout this injustice, Dylan has shown remarkable strength, resilience, and courage,” he said in a statement. “I wish him a smooth and joyful return to his life, his community, and his future here in New York City. He is a New Yorker, and our city is glad to have him home.”
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer invited his mother to Trump’s State of the Union address.
Contreras entered the United States after fleeing Venezuela in 2024 with his family. He was granted Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, though the Department of Homeland Security claims he illegally entered the U.S.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul urged White House border czar Tom Homan to release Contreras last year.
“Dylan is finally being reunited with his family,” she said on Wednesday.
“But while this is a step towards justice, Dylan will never get back the time he unjustly spent behind bars,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition.
“Elected officials in New York must take action to make sure that we do not remain complicit in other New Yorkers being torn from their families,” he added.
After his arrest and detention, New York lawmakers, schools and advocacy groups sounded the alarm over the arrests of several more students, including some children as young as 6 years old.
They joined a wave of arrests inside immigration courthouses and during ICE check-ins, with Manhattan fast becoming the nation’s capital for such arrests.
In June, a 19-year-old 11th grader, Derlis Snaider Chusin Toaquiza, who attended Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, was arrested and jailed inside a detention center in Texas. He was released on bond nearly two months later.
Toaquiza was “caught in a trap laid by immigration authorities in a courthouse in Manhattan, where federal, state, and local courthouses cluster within a few blocks,” city officials wrote in court documents seeking his release.
“These tactics risk driving underground those otherwise inclined to follow the country’s immigration laws, undermining the very system that those laws are designed to serve,” they wrote.
That same month, 20-year-old Joselyn Chipantiza-Sisalema was arrested and sent to a Louisiana detention center. The RiseBoro Community Partnership student was released three weeks later and returned to school in the fall to complete her GED program.
Mamadou Mouctar Diallo, who was enrolled at Brooklyn Frontiers High School, a transfer school that serves many older immigrant students, spent roughly three months in ICE detention after his arrest during a routine court hearing last August.
Diallo, who is originally from Guinea, has since been granted asylum in the U.S. and is in the process of obtaining a green card.
While immigration advocacy groups and state and local lawmakers were able to successfully intervene in students’ cases, several other New York City schoolchildren have been deported in recent months along with their families.
A second-grade student and her mother, who were seeking asylum in the U.S., were deported to Ecuador after an ICE check-in appointment in lower Manhattan last year.
The girl attended P.S. 89 elementary school in Queens. Her detention appeared to be the first known ICE arrest of a New Yorker under the age of 18 since Trump returned to office.
In a letter to ICE pleading for the girl’s release, P.S. 89’s principal called her “a kind, respectful, and dedicated young lady” whose “unexpected removal will cause significant disruption to her learning and will likely have a deep emotional impact on her classmates and our entire school community.”
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