randomly picked up by ICE<\/a> and never made it to his graduation.<\/p>\n“He wasn’t a hardened criminal or anything like that, didn’t have any type of record. That was the moment when everybody realized that this is a real thing,” Wightman said.<\/p>\n
Velasquez was taken to a detention center in Texas, where he spent months alone, before self-deporting to Guatemala.<\/p>\n
In September, Wightman visited the detention facility because he felt Velasquez deserved his cap, gown and diploma. But he was turned away.<\/p>\n
“A very stark reality for me going in there, because there was a barrier,” Wightman said.<\/p>\n
He knew he needed to try again.<\/p>\n
After refusing to give up, Wightman took two plane rides and a five-and-a-half-hour car trip through the foothills of Guatemala, where he was finally reunited with Velasquez and his family.<\/p>\n
“This is amazing for me. He helped me. And he supported me, for all this time,” Velasquez said.<\/p>\n
“When he got detained, it really upset a lot of us,” Wightman said.<\/p>\n
In Roosevelt, where the student population is 65% Latino and Hispanic, it was only the beginning.<\/p>\n
Since Velasquez was detained, three other students in Roosevelt have had their lives upended by ICE.<\/p>\n
One was detained, another is likely to be deported, and a third, whose father was detained, now has to work to support the family.<\/p>\n
Velasquez came to the U.S. alone when he was only 16 and has been through so much.<\/p>\n
“I’m not feeling I’m alone. I know I have him and my family,” Velasquez said.<\/p>\n
He also has his diploma from a man who taught him not to abandon people you care about.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASSAU COUNTY, N.Y. — It’s a world away from the hallways of a public high school in New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[69764,69753,11874,59100,69758,3125,8072,24370,18527,69761,69763,774,69751,69752,9,11,10,69759,69760,69754,69757,69755,69756,69762],"class_list":["post-170750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-69764","tag-alvaro-velasquez","tag-high-school","tag-high-school-diploma","tag-high-school-graduation","tag-ice-agents","tag-ice-arrest","tag-ice-detention","tag-ice-detention-center","tag-ice-news","tag-immigration-news","tag-nassau-county","tag-nassau-county-new-york","tag-nassau-county-ny","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-roosevelt-schools","tag-san-marcos-guatemala","tag-self-deport","tag-self-deportation","tag-self-deported","tag-shawn-wightman","tag-us-immigration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}