'Dreams Of A Better Life': ICE Detains College Student And Her Mom At LI Home, Fiance Says

MASTIC, NY – A Long Island college student and her mother have been detained by ICE and sent to a Louisiana detention center after a mistaken address led immigration agents to the door of their Mastic home, according to loved ones and professors familiar with the case.

Twenty-year-old Sara Lizeth Lopez Garcia, a Suffolk County Community College honors student, her mother and her 17-year-old brother were detained by ICE on May 21 when agents knocked on the door looking for the address's previous tenant, Lopez's fiancé, Santiago Ruiz Castilla, told Patch. Both women have "no criminal history, no warrants, no arrests, no deportation orders," he added.

Patch reached out to ICE, which confirmed receipt of the message but declined to comment.

Castilla said the two women were first detained in New York before being transferred to a New Jersey detention center and finally to Louisiana, while the teenager, a student at William Floyd High School, is living with neighbors.

According to the ICE website, Lopez Garcia is currently in custody at 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.

Castilla told Patch his fiancée was born in Colombia and moved to Long Island in 2020 at 15 years old. 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.

Castilla said his future wife has an "active Special Immigrant Juvenile status and is currently waiting for a visa to become available so she can apply for her green card."

"She does have legal protection," he said. "But, unfortunately, the officers completely ignored it."

According to East Islip-based immigration attorney Ala Amoachi, Lopez Garcia's "SIJ" is 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" are something that struck a chord with one of Lopez Garcia's professors, Cynthia Eaton, who penned a heartfelt open letter for SCCC's faculty union newsletter about the detention.

Eaton describes 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 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.

Since Lopez Garcia was detained, Castilla has launched an online fundraiser for her legal fees.

Lopez Garcia's detention is another example of Long Islanders impacted by the Trump administration's commitment to mass deportations around the country, as ICE agents reportedly detain immigrants at routine immigration check-ins in New York City and during raids at homes and workplaces.

On June 11, Nuvia Martinez Ventura, a mother of five young children living in Brentwood, was detained at a routine immigration check-in at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City and sent to the Houston Contract Detention Facility, where she faces deportation, Amoachi told Patch.

Last Tuesday, a lawsuit was filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York challenging Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman's agreement with ICE agents. It's the first lawsuit to take on the 287(g) statute in New York state, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, which shared a copy of the suit on its site.

At issue is Blakeman giving the Nassau County Police Department a role in handling ICE activities, which includes having 10 detectives immediately join the ICE program he announced in February.