The Teen Who Was Detained by ICE Just Before His High School Prom Has Been Deported

A teenager who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents just hours before his senior prom has been deported along with his mother, the New York Daily News reported on Friday.

ICE told the paper it had deported 19-year-old Diego Puma and his mother, Rosa Macancela, “in accordance with their final orders of removal.”

Agents first detained Puma in Ossining, NY, on June 8, days before he was supposed to graduate from high school. He and his mother had come to America in 2014 after fleeing gang violence in Ecuador. According to the Journal News, the two were arrested, but were allowed to stay in the country pending an asylum decision. Last November, a judge ordered that they be deported.

Puma was caught hiding in his cousin’s house a day after ICE agents took his mother away. Ossining’s mayor witnessed his arrest from her window.

Puma was then moved to a detention facility in Louisiana. He was separated from his mother, who was placed in a center 50 miles away.

Lawyers attempted to appeal the deportation orders. Tens of thousands of people signed a petition demanding that Puma and Macalena be spared. ICE rejected the pleas.

Puma and Macancela are one of a rapidly expanding group of undocumented people who have found themselves newly targeted by the Trump administration. Earlier this month, ICE acting director Thomas Homan told a congressional committee that every single undocumented immigrant in America should be “worried” about the threat of deportation.