NYC High Schooler Set To Be Released From ICE Custody, Lawyer Says

NEW YORK CITY — A Queens high school student detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will soon be released on bond, according to his lawyers.

Derlis Snaider Chusin Toaquiza has been detained since June 8 and is a 11th grade student enrolled at Grover Cleveland High School in Ridgewood.

On Tuesday, an immigration judge granted his release on bond.

Toaquiza's arrest in June occurred after he attended an immigration hearing. He has been in custody at a ICE detention center in Livingston, Texas.

“We are beyond thrilled that Derlis will soon be returning home to New York to be with his family where he belongs,” said Rebecca Rubin, Senior Staff Attorney for New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG)'s Immigrant Protection Unit, said. “At the same time, our happiness does not erase the fact that Derlis was unjustly detained at his immigration court hearing, torn away from his family and community, and detained in a prison with adult male strangers for over a month."

In addition, the NYLAG confirmed that the Envision Freedom Fund will be paying the bail of Edwin Velasquez Munoz, who is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Munoz, a 31-year-old Peruvian man with special needs, was granted bond to be released from ICE detention earlier this week.

We are overjoyed to be bringing Edwin and Derlis home to their families this week, thanks to the hard work of NYLAG’s immigration attorneys and the generous support of Envision Freedom Fund to post bond for two of our neighbors who had been doing everything right, and yet were still violently ripped away from their loved ones,” Melissa Chua, co-Director of NYLAG’s Immigrant Protection Unit, said. “We will not stand for this kind of state sanctioned violence that ICE and DHS continue to perpetrate against our fellow New Yorkers on a daily basis through extrajudicial kidnappings, disappearances, wrongful imprisonments and denials of due process.

Chua said they are fighting every day to bring home others "who are still being unjustly detained by ICE’s reign of terror."

"We will never stop fighting to protect the rights of immigrant New Yorkers and their communities," she said.