"Free Wildin": Teen Picked Up by ICE on His Way to High School Faces Deportation to Honduras

Students at Riverside High School in Durham, North Carolina, are gathering on Capitol Hill today to demand the release of their undocumented classmate, 19-year-old Wildin Acosta. Acosta was detained by immigration agents in January while he was on his way to class. He had no criminal record and was in his final semester of high school. Acosta’s family is from Olancho, Honduras, one of the most violent regions in a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world. Wildin was scheduled to be deported in March, but his teachers and peers gathered together, held vigils, lobbied their local representatives and took to social media. Wildin Acosta remains detained in Georgia’s notorious Stewart Detention Center. He is one of several teens in North Carolina sometimes referred to as the "NC6," who have been targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as part of the Obama administration’s Operation Border Guardian. All this comes amid reports that ICE is launching a brand new month-long campaign of raids specifically aimed at rounding up and deporting undocumented Central American mothers and children. We’re joined from Washington, D.C., by Paromita Shah, the associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, and Axel Herrera, a senior at Riverside High School in Durham, North Carolina, where Wildin Acosta was also a student.

AMY GOODMAN: Are immigration agents targeting undocumented students? That’s what students at Riverside High School in Durham, North Carolina, are asking as they gather on Capitol Hill today to demand the release of their undocumented classmate, 19-year-old Wildin Acosta. He was detained by immigration agents in January while he was on his way to class. He had no criminal record, was in his final semester of high school. His family is from Olancho, Honduras, one of the most violent regions in Honduras with one of the highest murder rates in the world. Wildin was scheduled to be deported in March, but his teachers and peers gathered together, held vigils, lobbied their local representatives and took to social media with hashtags like #FreeWildin and #EducationNotDeportation. This is one of his supporters, Riverside High School teacher Ellen Holmes.

ELLEN HOLMES: My name is Ellen Holmes, and I’m a teacher at Riverside High School. I have worked with Wildin David Acosta, who was detained by immigration on January 28th in a club I run, Destino Success. I just wanted to express how devastating it’s been to the staff and the families and the students here at Riverside High School to have Wildin detained. I also think that there is so much fear in our community, because, unfortunately, he is not the only child that they have detained. It’s creating absences and dropouts in our schools. It’s creating just a huge feeling of fear inside our school and in our community. And I’m asking that we stop taking children and we return them to their families.

AMY GOODMAN: Wildin Acosta remains detained in Georgia’s notorious Stewart Detention Center. His case is in the appeals process and has gained the attention of lawmakers like Democratic Congressmember G. K. Butterfield of North Carolina. But his supporters fear he could be deported any day. Wildin is one of several teens in North Carolina sometimes referred to as the "NC6," who has been targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, ICE agents, as part of the Obama administration’s so-called Operation Border Guardian. For more, we go to D.C., where we’re joined by two guests. Axel Herrera is a senior at Riverside High School in Durham. Wildin Acosta was a student at the same school. And Paromita Shah, the associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Paromita Shah, let’s begin with you. We don’t have much time. But talk about what happened on the day that Wildin was picked up. Where was he? And then, what are the grounds for him being imprisoned from January right through now? We’re talking, what? Five months? For five months?

http://m.democracynow.org/stories/16235