Description
Last year, Elder Chavez-Carranza was a junior in high school living in Albertville. But ever since a traffic stop in December, he's been in ICE detention and his family, friends, and others in the north Alabama community have been working to get him released.
AL.com spoke to Chavez-Carranza by video with help from another detainee acting as an interpreter. He said he was driving 52mph in a 45mph zone when an officer stopped him. The officer asked for his identification and where he was from.
Chavez-Carranza said he attempted to show ICE agents that he was granted special immigrant juvenile status in September under President Trump’s administration. But he said they ignored his documentation.
Special immigrant juvenile status is an immigration classification created by Congress to provide protection to children who were, “abused, neglected or abandoned,” by a parent.
Chavez-Carranza said his parents abandoned him when he was a baby in Honduras. In 2022, he made it to America to live with his sister, Mayuri Chavez.
DHS provided a statement to AL.com defending Chavez-Carranza’s detainment: “He illegally entered the United States via the southern border on February 2, 2022, under the Biden administration.”
Chavez-Carranza said he feels “betrayed” by the fact he was given protected status under the Trump administration but just a few months later detained by ICE.
Unaccompanied minors living in the country during Trump’s second term have been deported at three times the rate they were during his first term, according to ProPublica. And the majority of those removed in 2025 had no criminal record.
Read more on AL.com
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