LI College Student Deported To Colombia After 2+ Months In Detention Center: Report

MASTIC, NY – A former Long Island college student and her mother, who were detained by ICE at their Mastic home and sent to a Louisiana detention center for over two months, have been deported to Colombia, according to Newsday.

The outlet said that Sara Lopez Garcia, 20, and her mother were flown from Louisiana to Colombia's capital city of Bogotá on a Colombia Air Force plane with about 150 immigrants late Thursday. She took another plane the next day to Bucaramanga, the outlet said.

In July, Patch reported that Lopez Garcia's life changed forever on a fateful day in May when ICE agents knocked on the door looking for the address's previous tenant of their Mastic home, fiancé, Santiago Ruiz Castilla, said at the time.

Castilla told Patch that the two women were first detained in New York before being transferred to a New Jersey detention center and finally to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, one of eight detention facilities in the state. It holds a maximum capacity of 1,000 people and is privately owned by The GEO Group, Inc.

Meanwhile, her 17-year-old brother, a student at William Floyd High School, stayed in New York, living with neighbors.

Castilla told Patch that his fiancée was born in Colombia and moved to Long Island in 2020 at the age of 15. She graduated from William Floyd High School, where the couple met, and graduated in 2022 before starting their college careers at SCCC, where Lopez Garcia majors in interior design.

He said Lopez Garcia had an "active Special Immigrant Juvenile status" and was "waiting for a visa to become available so she can apply for her green card."

"She does have legal protection," he said on July 2. "But, unfortunately, the officers completely ignored it." At the time, East Islip-based immigration attorney Ala Amoachi agreed that the Lopez Garcia's "SIJ" was meant to protect her.

"The legal remedy of Special Immigrant Juvenile Status was enacted to protect one of the most vulnerable populations of immigrants — children who have been abandoned, abused or neglected by one or both of their parents," Amoachi told Patch. "ICE's detainment of youths like Sara, who have a pathway to relief, is an example of this administration's cruel and indiscriminate enforcement actions against immigrants with disregard for the humanitarian implications."

Those "humanitarian implications" struck a chord with one of Lopez Garcia's professors, Cynthia Eaton, who penned a heartfelt open letter for SCCC's faculty union newsletter as news of the student's detention spread and left heavy hearts around campus.

Eaton described Lopez Garcia as a "thriving" honors student with a 3.9 GPA, a campus peer mentor and a Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society member deeply involved in campus life who was "loved by her fellow students and faculty."

"As part of a volunteer project, she was working with peers to redesign a bedroom for a local domestic violence shelter and had been looking forward to renovating and painting the space in the fall semester," Eaton wrote.

Eaton told Patch that she recognizes that Lopez Garcia's story is a "difficult one," and noted that her detention took place off campus.

"I wrote this story about my student to help people understand the broader impacts of these situations on our local communities," Eaton said.

SCCC professor Dante Morelli also spoke out on behalf of Lopez Garcia, writing that her detention the day before graduation ended the school year on a "sad note."

"She wanted only to improve her life by attending our institution, where we proudly transform lives, which is exactly what commencement is a celebration of: Our community," Morelli wrote.

According to Newsday, Castilla relocated to Colombia to be with Lopez Garcia where she plans to complete her degree online.

Patch reached out to Castilla, who was not immediately available for comment.

"I miss New York and I miss my friends, and I feel like I left something of me over there," she told Newsday. "But also I'm just disappointed with America. It was illegal what they did to me.

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