NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — New York City high school student Dylan Lopez Contreras reunited with his community at a homecoming event held Thursday, nearly 10 months after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Lopez Contreras, 21, was taken into custody during a routine check-in appointment with immigration officials at 26 Federal Plaza, according to his legal team. At the time, he was 20. He was then transported to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania where he was held for almost 10 months, before being freed on Wednesday. The circumstances of his release were not immediately known.
"As much as I'm happy that I'm free, and I'm out here, I'm still sad that there are people still in there, unjustly, who deserve to be free as well," Lopez Contreras said through a translator.
Lopez Contreras arrived in the U.S. in 2024 and began attending Ellis Preparatory Academy, a school in the Bronx that enrolls migrant students who have aged out of a traditional high school setting. While attending school, he worked as a delivery driver to help support his family.
"Ten months he should've been out there, getting his education. being a delivery worker, supporting his mom and his family," Gov. Kathy Hochul said at the homecoming event. "But instead, he was thrown away, like a piece of garbage, into a prison in Pennsylvania."
The governor added that Lopez Contreras came to New York with legal documentation, crossed the border and showed up in court, "following all the rules he was told to follow."
Mayor Zohran Mamdani welcomed Lopez Contreras back home, before touching on the difficulties that many New Yorkers have felt under the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
"We always understand that to be an immigrant and to be a New Yorker is not, however, to have two identities in tension," the mayor said. "They are, for myself and for more than 3 million who call this city home, one in the same."
Lopez Contreras's arrest was the first widely-known instance of a public school student being detained by ICE in the city since President Donald Trump regained office, and garnered the attention of top elected officials like Sen. Chuck Schumer, who invited his mother, Raiza Contreras, to this year's State of the Union. Schumer and Contreras celebrated Wednesday's news in statements sent out by the New York Legal Assistance Group.
"All glory and honor belong to God, who opened doors and made the impossible possible," Contreras said. "I am grateful to everyone who, in one way or another, played a part in offering support and strength, and were always there."
Lopez Contreras's release comes only days after that of Leqaa Kordia—a New Jersey woman who was detained after her involvement in pro-Palestinain protests at Columbia University in 2024. She spent over a year in a federal detention center in Texas.
Mamdani said that during an impromptu meeting with Trump last month, the pair "discussed ICE's actions at Columbia University," and that he "asked that the federal government release Leqaa Kordia and drop the cases against four others."