Sign up for Chalkbeat Detroit’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and Michigan education policy.
Maykol Bogoya-Duarte, the Detroit teen whose detention by federal immigration authorities last month caused an outcry and led to calls for his release, has been deported, his attorney said Friday morning.
Attorney Ruby Robinson said he learned late Thursday night from Maykol’s mother, in an 11:15 p.m. voicemail, that the teen was back in his home country of Colombia.
Robinson said he hadn’t yet spoken with Maykol, but hoped to do so later Friday. He said the teen is now with his grandmother in Colombia.
Chalkbeat reached out to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to confirm the deportation, but did not get a response. His information is no longer available on ICE’s detainee locator.
Maykol, 18, was arrested on May 20 while he and a group of other newcomer boys attempted to join a field trip at Lake Erie Metropark, about 25 miles away from Detroit. Rockwood police stopped the teen for allegedly tailgating another car. Maykol did not have a driver’s license, only a City of Detroit identification card, Robinson has previously said.
His detention prompted advocacy from his teachers, fellow students, community members, and lawmakers who pleaded for Maykol to be allowed to remain in the country to finish high school. He was 3.5 credits shy of a high school diploma at Western International High School, where he was enrolled.
“I’m devastated,” said Kristen Schoettle, who taught Maykol at Western.
“The cruelty of this country really shakes me,” Schoettle said. “This kid, my bright student, was passed along to prisons for a month, scared and facing awful conditions I’m sure, for the crime of what — fleeing his country as a minor in search of a better life? And the US government decided his time was better spent in prison than finishing out the school year.”
Schoettle said she hopes to hear from Maykol today.
“I hope he’s safe with his grandma. I hope he can recover from this traumatizing experience and still will dream of a better life. I’ll miss him in my classroom next year and our city and our country are worse off without people like him,” she said.
Schoettle shared examples of Maykol’s classroom work with Chalkbeat, including what he wrote when asked earlier this year to write about freedom.
“I think the freedom in this moment is a little confusing since we can’t leave safely since we don’t know what can happen and it seems strange to me since we have to be more careful than usual,” he wrote in Spanish.
Thousands of people signed a petition earlier last week calling on the Detroit Public School Community District and lawmakers to condemn Maykol’s arrest.
Dozens of people spoke in support of the teen’s release for more than 2½ hours at the district’s school board meeting on June 10. Afterward, the board released a statement saying it wanted Maykol to be able to stay in the country to earn his diploma.
Maykol’s mother attended that school board meeting, though she didn’t speak. Robinson, senior managing attorney with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, said the organization isn’t representing Maykol’s mother.
“But I would suspect she will try to return to Colombia at her own expense based on what she learned with Maykol’s month-long, taxpayer-funded, and entirely unnecessary and harmful detention.”
During the May 20 traffic stop that led to his detention, police officers could not communicate with him in Spanish and called Customs and Border Protection agents to translate.
Maykol, who came to the U.S. when he was 16, had already been going through a legal process to return to Colombia after receiving a final order of deportation in 2024. He was working with immigration officials and the Colombian Consulate to obtain the documentation he needed to fly out of the country with his mother.
While he made those arrangements, Maykol planned to finish high school in Detroit.
Hannah Dellinger contributed to this report.
Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.
