When a 20-year-old from Venezuela was arrested last week at an immigration courthouse in New York, it was the first reported instance of a public school student in the city being apprehended by federal officials since the start of President Trump’s second term.
It also signaled a shift in strategy by immigration authorities who are intent on expediting deportations.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers last week began standing inside and outside of immigration courts across the United States in an effort to detain certain migrants who are appearing for scheduled hearings. Immigration lawyers said ICE officers — from San Diego and Los Angeles to Boston and Miami — were targeting migrants shortly after their cases were dismissed by judges. Government lawyers are requesting that the cases be dismissed in order to place the migrants in expedited deportation proceedings.
Dylan, the New York student, was arrested on Wednesday in the lobby of a courthouse in Lower Manhattan by ICE officers who showed up at the city’s immigration courts in large numbers. Dylan’s last name was withheld at the request of his family, which fears retaliation from the government.
On Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams fended off a barrage of questions about the student’s arrest.
Mr. Adams, who oversees a school system serving thousands of immigrant students, sought to distance himself from Dylan’s apprehension, saying that the arrest was a federal issue beyond his purview because it did not happen on school grounds.
“I’m interested that you all are using all this time to talk about something without my span of control,” Mr. Adams told reporters during an unrelated news conference on Tuesday. “I don’t handle federal enforcement policies, let’s be clear on that.”
“My opinion,” he continued, “doesn’t matter.”
ICE appears to be using the new strategy to place the apprehended migrants in deportation proceedings that can be fast-tracked and don’t require court hearings, an escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to meet the president’s deportation goals.
Dylan, whose arrest was reported earlier by Chalkbeat, was detained by ICE agents at the immigration courthouse after he showed up for a mandatory hearing. He was enrolled in Ellis Prep. Academy in the Bronx, which is part of the public school system and serves older immigrants learning English. Dylan is one of more than 40,000 migrant students who have entered the city’s schools in recent years.
The young man left Venezuela last year and entered the United States in April 2024 under a Biden administration program that permitted thousands to temporarily live and work in the country while applying for asylum, according to his mother and lawyers. He did not have a criminal record, according to them, and, when not in school, worked part time as a delivery driver to help his mother and two younger siblings save enough money to move out of a shelter.
“He was like a father to my two children,” his mother, Raiza, who also asked that her last name be withheld, said in an interview in Spanish.
Dylan showed up at court — with his mother but without a lawyer — believing the hearing would be routine. Instead, he was arrested by ICE agents in plainclothes shortly after his case was dismissed, which stripped him of certain legal protections, his lawyers said.
He was whisked away in an unmarked car and has remained in detention since May 21, his mother said.
“My son is not a criminal,” she said. “My fear is that he will be deported to Venezuela and arrested there or worse.”
Dylan has been moved between facilities in New Jersey, Texas, Virginia and Pennsylvania, his lawyers said.
“Dylan entered the United States with permission to seek asylum, and his detention robs him of the opportunity to seek that relief with the full protections offered to him under the law,” the New York Legal Assistance Group, an organization that provides free aid to low-income clients and is representing him, said in a statement. “He works, goes to school, has friends and was fully complying with immigration proceedings. All this does is disrupt communities and unnecessarily put people in chaotic and potentially harmful situations.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that Dylan had “illegally” entered the United States last year, even though his lawyers and family said that he had used a Biden-era mobile app that allowed migrants to arrive legally through a port of entry to claim asylum. The White House has questioned the legality of the app, which officials argue was abused by the Biden administration to let hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country.
“Most aliens who illegally entered the United States within the past two years are subject to expedited removals,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been.”
ICE issued guidance in January allowing its officers to conduct arrests near courthouses, and federal officials have said that arresting undocumented immigrants there is safer for ICE agents, and the public, because the migrants have already gone through security screenings.
Dylan’s arrest unsettled administrators at his Bronx high school and prompted Melissa Aviles-Ramos, the schools chancellor appointed by Mr. Adams, to issue a statement on Monday saying, “Our hearts go out to the student who was detained by ICE.”
“While this incident did not occur on school grounds, we want to reassure our families: We will continue to speak out and advocate for the safety, dignity and rights of all of our students,” she wrote in a post on X, encouraging parents to continue sending their children to school.
Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, a union representing thousands of New York educators, said that Dylan had been “taken advantage of and stripped of his legal rights during a court hearing.”
New York City’s so-called sanctuary laws preclude city officials from helping with most federal immigration enforcement matters. But after successfully lobbying the federal government to abandon his criminal corruption charges, the mayor, a Democrat, has shown reluctance to criticize the Trump administration’s efforts. The government sought to dismiss the charges, arguing, in part, that the indictment limited the mayor’s ability to aid the White House’s deportation agenda.
Mr. Adams has said that while he supports the intent of the sanctuary city laws, they go too far in limiting cooperation with the federal government. He has fostered an apparently good working relationship with Thomas Homan, the president’s border czar, who famously promised to be up “his butt” should Mr. Adams not advance the Trump administration’s agenda.
The mayor sought to allow ICE to open an office at the Rikers Island jail complex, but the City Council filed a lawsuit that has temporarily stymied that effort.
On Tuesday, Mr. Adams insisted he could not comment substantively on Dylan’s case because the issue was outside the ambit of New York’s mayor.
“You have to speak to the federal authorities,” he said, responding to a question from The New York Post about whether the arrest might undermine efforts to have immigrants cooperate with law enforcement. “I don’t know how I could be any clearer. Federal authorities handle ICE. I don’t control the borders.”
He also seemed to suggest that he could not leverage his relationship with Mr. Homan to help the student, because it might run afoul of the sanctuary laws.
“We have to be extremely careful, because the New York City Council laws are limited on what coordination I can do,” he said.
That explanation made little sense to Rendy Desamours, a spokesman for the Council’s speaker, Adrienne Adams, who is running for mayor.
“Neither the city’s sanctuary laws nor any other city law prevent the mayor from advocating for New Yorkers being targeted by federal immigration overreach,” he said.
Troy Closson contributed reporting.
Luis Ferré-Sadurní is a Times reporter covering immigration, focused on the influx of migrants arriving in the New York region.
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
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