A New York high school student who was detained at an immigration courthouse in May last year, sparking national outrage, was released on Wednesday. It was the first widely known instance of a public school student being arrested by federal immigration agents. On Wednesday, he was released from the Moshannon Valley Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, after 10 months in detention. Contreras’s arrest last year shocked his community, and previewed the Trump administration’s indiscriminate approach to immigration enforcement. “The chaos experienced by so many communities and families at the hands of ICE must end.”In additional essays for the Guardian, several of Contreras’s friends and classmates said they had been shaken by his detention.

Source: The Guardian March 19, 2026 06:02 UTC