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Dylan Lopez Contreras, a Bronx high schooler arrested by federal immigration agents in May, was denied asylum and ordered to be deported back to Venezuela, his attorneys said Wednesday.
His legal team from the New York Legal Assistance Group, or NYLAG, plans to appeal the decision made Tuesday by a Newark immigration judge and push for his release on bond. The appeal will stop the deportation process, and Dylan will remain detained in a Pennsylvania facility.
Dylan’s lawyers have 30 days to file the appeal.
“It’s certainly not the outcome we were hoping for and not the outcome he deserves,” said Lauren Kostes, a NYLAG attorney, adding that evidence was “overlooked and ignored.”
Four months ago, Dylan showed up at his routine immigration court date at Manhattan’s 26 Federal Plaza and became the first known public school student to be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
Dylan’s case, which was first reported by Chalkbeat, offered a stark example of how the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown affected New York City school communities — and how educators have tried to reassure families with mounting deportation fears. Dylan’s school, ELLIS Preparatory Academy rallied to his defense, connecting his family with legal support, raising money, and sending him letters, while also trying to reassure its other students who feel threatened by the current political climate.
Several schools across the five boroughs have since grappled with detentions of their own students, including Grover Cleveland High School in Queens, Brooklyn’s Frontiers High School, and P.S. 89, a Queens elementary school that saw a 6-year-old student deported to Ecuador.
The Education Department said they could not share how many public school students have been detained by ICE, especially since they do not track or ask families to disclose country of origin or immigration status.
But hundreds of young people in New York City have been caught in the federal government’s wave of arrests: About 275 people in New York City who were born in 2004 or later have been detained by ICE, according to government data provided by ICE in response to a public records request to the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Chalkbeat.
Whether someone wins or loses their asylum case, Kostes said, might depend on the luck of the draw in terms of their judge, which “demonstrates a lot of the problems with the immigration system.” In Dylan’s case, his judge had a 95.8% denial rate, Kostes said, noting that the judge’s ruling was not public.
“You can have wildly different interpretations of the same law by different judges,” she said, “so different judges can have wildly different grant rates.”
Immigration Judge Maria Akalski, who oversaw Dylan’s case, had a much higher asylum denial rate than judges nationwide, according to an analysis of 2019-24 data by the nonprofit Transactional Records Clearinghouse.
The appeal process might also be challenging.
The Trump administration has fired many immigration judges, Kostes said, and many in the legal community worry that the firings have targeted those who tended to have higher asylum-granting rates.
Crackdown brings immigration slowdown
When Dylan made the trek from Venezuela across the U.S. border in April 2024 he requested asylum and was permitted to enter the country and work under a Biden-era humanitarian program. The 20-year-old made his way to New York, enrolling in ELLIS Prep, which typically serves older students who have been in the country less than a year. Dylan picked up a part-time job as a delivery worker to help his mom who worked multiple jobs. He helped her save enough money so they and Dylan’s two younger siblings could move out of a city-run shelter and into their own apartment.
Kostes said Dylan did everything right but was still being punished.
“Even with cases that should win under the law, they are not winning,” Kostes said. “It’s doing what it’s supposed to do, which is convincing people to leave and convincing people to stop fighting and convincing people to get out. And that’s heartbreaking and horrifying because they’re getting sent back to places they fled when they had a right to stay.”
President Donald Trump campaigned on promises of mass deportations and has made immigration a focal point of his second term. In his inaugural address, he pledged to return “millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” In the months that followed, many immigrants without legal status and without criminal histories — like Dylan — have been detained across the nation at routine immigration hearings.
Department of Homeland Security officials have criticized former President Joseph Biden’s policy allowing immigrants like Dylan to enter the country, saying previously, “ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been.”
The federal government’s approach has dramatically slowed immigration into the country. In July, the number of immigrants unlawfully crossing the U.S.-Mexico sank to a historic low. New York City saw the effects in its shelter system: In the same month, the rate of new migrants entering city-run shelters dropped to fewer than 100 per week from a high of more than 4,000 per week two years before.
Dylan has spent most of these past months in Pennsylvania’s Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest detention facility in the Northeast. Many have been calling for the facility’s closure, following a federal complaint filed over insufficient medical and mental health care and inadequate translation services.
Dylan recently told Chalkbeat he remained committed to learning English and continued to hold out hope to pursue a college degree in the U.S.
“This unjust detention has frustrated and paralyzed my education and effort momentarily,” Dylan wrote in Spanish a few weeks ago in response to questions Chalkbeat sent through his legal team. “But it won’t make me give up on working hard toward my educational goals.”
Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.
Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.
