An 8-year-old Haitian student was taken into immigration custody during a routine appointment in downtown San Diego last week, raising concerns among his family, educators and classmates. As of Monday, the office of Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif., said his relatives still did not know where he was being held and were receiving help to locate him.
Video recorded Wednesday by a volunteer observing immigration proceedings at an ICE field office showed three officers leading away the boy, who wore a white button-down shirt and slacks. NBC San Diego obtained the footage Friday. According to the San Diego Unified School District and the Haitian Bridge Alliance, officers separated him from his cousins and an uncle who had cared for him since his father’s deportation last year.
The child, whose name has not been publicly released, attends third grade at Fay Elementary School. In a letter sent Friday to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services, district officials said he lost his immigration protections this summer after a Supreme Court ruling allowed President Donald Trump to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. He subsequently received a summons for last week’s ICE appointment, and his uncle brought him because he wanted to comply with the law, the district said.
Temporary Protected Status protected hundreds of thousands of Haitians from deportation following the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Those protections were repeatedly extended as conditions in the country deteriorated. Gangs now control most of the capital following the assassination of Haiti’s president in 2021.
DHS gave a different account of the caregiver’s status. A spokesperson told NBC San Diego that officers could not verify that the man accompanying the child was his uncle or establish that he had legal guardianship. Officers therefore classified the boy as an unaccompanied minor. The spokesperson said removing him from the household was a precaution intended to protect his safety.
Haitian Bridge Alliance Executive Director Guerline Jozef said Monday that the boy had been transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement despite his uncle’s compliance with the rules. That office, overseen by HHS, takes custody of children classified as unaccompanied minors. It declined to discuss the case Monday, citing privacy protections. Agency figures put the number of such children in HHS care at 1,640, while Deportation Data Project figures show immigration authorities took more than 8,000 children into custody over the past year.
DHS rejected descriptions of the boy as having been placed in detention. It also said he had been brought into the United States illegally at an unspecified time by a man who claimed to be his father. According to DHS, Customs and Border Patrol, rather than ICE, removed that man to Mexico. Vargas condemned the child’s removal from his community and called for the restoration of TPS protections, while Jozef criticized the disruption to his family life.
The school district is providing additional crisis counselors at Fay Elementary this week after classmates expressed fear and concern for their friend. District spokesperson James Canning said Monday that educators were worried about the boy’s safety and well-being. He said neither DHS nor HHS had responded to the district’s letter asking the agencies to reconsider the effects of immigration enforcement policies on students.
