A 16-year-old Bronx student with special immigrant status was arrested and detained by ICE agents during a mandatory routine check-in, lawyers for the boy said in a lawsuit seeking his release Friday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities took Joel Camas, a junior at Gotham Collaborative High School, into custody Thursday at 201 Varick St. in lower Manhattan, with plans to transfer him out of New York and deport him back to his native Ecuador, according to his attorneys and sources.
His lawyers believe he is still in custody in the Bronx.
“ICE’s actions of arresting a child — with legal status reserved for particularly vulnerable minors — at a routine check-in is breathtakingly cruel and a clear violation of U.S. immigration law and the Constitution,” Elizabeth Gyori, senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
Joel, an unaccompanied minor, was described in court documents as “E.J.C.C.”
“E.J.C.C. was doing exactly what the government asked by showing up to his ICE check in and pursuing a legal pathway to citizenship. When the Trump administration punishes children with lawful status for following the rules, it turns our justice system into a farce. With this lawsuit, this regime can’t get away with it.”
Gyori said Joel should have been in his second-period U.S. history class. Instead, after complying with the government’s directive that he present himself for an ICE check-in, the boy was arrested and detained — despite a protective status reserved for minors who have been abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent, she said.
According to court papers filed in Manhattan federal court, the teen entered the U.S. with his mother around Dec. 4, 2022, seeking asylum from gang violence and threats to their lives in Ecuador. His mom has since “self-deported” in a bid to protect her son from further immigration enforcement, according to The New York Times.
“That’s why I left him,” his mom, Elvia Chafla, told the outlet. “I didn’t know this would happen.”
While in New York, Joel was granted special immigrant juvenile status and had begun to move on with his life — until Thursday’s arrest.
Olga Fedorova/AP
Protesters shout slogans during a protest against immigration crackdown in the aftermath of a raid on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Olga Fedorova)
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who according to The Times went with Camas to the check-in, threw his support behind the legal filing in a post on X: “I pray it works, and soon,” Lander said. “He was eager to get back to class.”
Lander added that Camas may be the first unaccompanied minor to be detained during President Trump’s second term.
“We are very saddened to learn that a 16-year-old student has been detained by ICE. This is a student who should be at school today with his classmates,” said Nicole Brownstein, press secretary for the city’s public schools.
“Yesterday was another devastating day in New York City and we cannot let ICE continue to tear communities apart and harm New Yorkers,” Beth Baltimore, deputy director of The Door’s Legal Services Center said in a statement.
“From the courts to the streets of New York City, young New Yorkers seeking protection through our legal system are being met with threats, detention and the possibility of removal from the United States,” Baltimore said. “At The Door, we are committed to supporting and standing with New York youth and standing up to the injustices taking place in our city.”
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The lawsuit names William Joyce, as the acting director of the New York field office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as a main defendant along with Kristi Noem, the U.S. secretary of Homeland Security. ICE agents have arrested hundreds of children across the state, according to the NYCLU.
Among them was Dylan, another high school student from the Bronx, who was arrested in May during a mandatory court date by agents who followed him out of the courtroom and into the courthouse lobby. Dylan, who is Venezuelan, remains in federal immigration detention after an immigration judge denied his asylum claim last month.
In August, a 6-year-old Queens student named Dayra was detained during a routine immigration hearing in Lower Manhattan. She and her mother were later deported to Ecuador despite public outcry, including from New York Gov. Hochul.
