On the night of his graduation from Loganville High School, Josue Trejo Lopez was not onstage wearing the red graduation gown he had purchased. Instead, he streamed the event from San Salvador, El Salvador, watching the ceremony unfold on his iPhone 15’s small screen.
When his name was called, no one stepped onto the podium. For a moment, the crowd fell into an uneasy silence. Josue, 2,600 miles away, began to sob. His older brother, Jose, held him and reassured him that it was okay — that he was proud of him.
“Take it easy, they said your name at the graduation… What is good is that you did it. You graduated. Take it easy,” Jose told his brother in Spanish, as seen in a video shared with Documented.
Two weeks earlier, on May 7, the brothers had arrived in El Salvador after being deported from the United States. The deportation had resulted from their last ICE check-in on March 16 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, where both were unexpectedly detained and deported in less than six weeks from their home in Central Islip, Long Island.
Jose and Josue had lived in the U.S. for nine years after migrating from El Salvador in May of 2016 and complied with ICE check-ins since 2018, after their asylum claim was denied and they were given an order of deportation. Despite having no criminal records, their deportation reflects what immigration advocates say is a growing pattern nationwide of long-settled immigrants being taken into custody during scheduled ICE appointments.
ICE does not keep public records of individuals who’ve been detained during check-ins, but, across the nation, lawyers have seen an increase in detentions during ICE check-ins.
Jodi Ziesemer, director of the Immigrant Protection Unit at New York Legal Assistance Group, told Documented in March that people who have a final order of removal have more frequently been detained during their check-ins with ICE.
Ala Amoachi, the immigration attorney representing Jose and Josue, said that when she called the Board of Immigration Appeals, the clerk confirmed that “a lot of people are being picked up at affirmative ICE check-ins.”
Documented has also reported other cases where immigrants were detained during their check-ins with ICE, even after they had been attending the check-ins for more than five years and had no change in their immigration and criminal histories.
After reviewing public records, Documented found no criminal charges or convictions for either brother in Long Island or Atlanta, the two cities where they lived during their time in the U.S. According to their Record of Deportable/Inadmissible Alien, Form I-213, reviewed by Documented and issued during entry to the U.S. in 2016, their only deportable offense was entering the U.S. without authorization at ages 11 and 10.
DHS did not respond to Documented’s request about specific grounds for removal, nor the decisions that led to the detainment and deportation of the Trejo Lopez brothers.
Growing up in the U.S.
Jose and Josue migrated to the U.S. with their mother, who was pregnant at the time. After crossing the southern border, they sought asylum, fearing return to El Salvador. They settled in Atlanta and filed an asylum claim, which was denied in 2018 and again on appeal in 2019, leaving them with an order of deportation.
While attending Loganville High School in Georgia, the brothers checked in with ICE regularly.
“Some people used to make fun of me because I had those ICE check-ins… they would say, ‘Why do you have to go to this? Let me guess, because you are illegal,’” Jose said, adding that he stopped talking to several of his friends.
Also Read: Arrested by the NYPD but Not Prosecuted, They’re Now Imprisoned in El Salvador
Without a legal status, college was out of reach, they said. Instead, both planned to attend a technical school to become a mechanic. After Jose graduated from high school in 2023, he moved to Long Island with his legal guardian — a longtime friend of his mother. Josue stayed in Atlanta to finish school but visited Jose every summer and winter break, where they spent time learning about day trading on their phones from influencers.
“I was trying to move my brother [forward], teaching what I was learning at the same time, ‘cause he was not working, I was not working. So let’s get some knowledge. I’m gonna teach you what I know,” Jose said.
The “correct” way
On March 12, the two brothers went to 26 Federal Plaza for their ICE check-in. When they arrived, Jose and Josue were told that they had to reschedule their check-in and return with their mother, who continues to live in Georgia. It was something that had happened in the past, while they were all living in the same state, but the brothers assumed that their mother’s presence was now unnecessary since they had moved to New York. However, the officer told them it was because they had entered the U.S. as minors, Jose explained.
Rescheduling an appointment with ICE would take weeks, if not months, Jose said. It was for that reason that he was surprised when the new appointment became available just two days later on March 14.
“We thought something was going to happen ‘cause it’s not usual for them to give check-ins in the same week or right away,” Jose said. He said he felt stressed during the two days leading up to the appointment. “I was quiet, and my brother was quiet too,” Jose said.
The night before their set appearances before ICE, Jose and Josue — both of whom are devoted Christians — prayed that everything would go well, something they had done before every immigration check-in.
They left Central Islip by 3:30 a.m. and were in line at Federal Plaza by 4:30 a.m. Other migrants started arriving around the same time. “We wanted to be the first ones to enter and the first ones to leave,” Jose said.
By 7 a.m. the doors opened and they went inside. An officer saw their email appointment and told Jose that he did not have to wait and took him to the fifth floor. “I was nervous, and I was like, you know what? I am just going to hope for the best,” he said.
On the 5th floor, Jose recalled, the officer questioned if he knew that they had an order of deportation. “He asked if we’re doing anything about it,” Jose said.
He confirmed that he was aware of it and handed the officer a stack of papers that included documentation that signaled they were filing for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. “‘This is not going to help you,’ he said, and he gave the papers back to me. He did not even go over it,” Jose said.
Around 7:30 a.m., they called Josue, and both were taken into a small room. “They closed the curtain and basically told us that we were being detained and that we were going to be proceeded to deportation,” Jose said. They were detained for 10 hours before being transferred to a detention facility in Buffalo.
Jose could not believe it and still had hope that they would be released, he said. After all, he was following the law and abiding by the procedures that were recommended by immigration agencies. “[The government] is telling us to do it ‘the right way,’ and when we do it the right way, we get punished,” Jose said. “Don’t show up to the check-ins? No, that’s the illegal way. So which one is the correct way?”
Looking for a way back to the United States
On May 7, nearly six weeks after they were detained, Jose and Josue were deported. All the while, Jose hoped someone would say, “ ‘You guys are fine. You guys have no criminal record’,” he said. But that moment never came and instead they were flown to El Salvador, a country where they have no family.
A friend of their grandma, a 69-year-old man, took them in and has been housing them ever since they arrived in the capital of El Salvador. The brothers said the first week was tough because they did not have their IDs and worried about heading out onto the streets, where military presence is active.
During one of the first video calls with their family, their younger brother did not recognize Jose because he had grown a beard while in detention. “He did not know who he was. But when he saw me, he was happy, Josue said. “He was laughing, and then he started crying because he was looking for me in the house. That literally destroyed me from the inside.”
Now, they say their days feel like an eternity because they do not have any friends to spend time with, nor do they know the region. They pass time learning day trading still and talking to their younger brother and mother via WhatsApp video calling.
They are currently planning to remain in San Salvador, as they feel it would be easier to find jobs — such as in customer service or a call center — which they’ll need to find better accommodation. Jose said he has been trying his best not to crumble. “I have the pressure of keeping my brother, at least, happy or keeping him motivated, to not give up.”
In the meantime, Amoachi said they filed a motion with the Board of Immigration Appeals to request an opportunity to pursue adjustment of status based on Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. “They were foreclosed from that opportunity due to prior counsel’s failure,” Amoachi told Documented. She added that their previous lawyer — who represented the Trejo Lopez brothers from 2016 to 2023 — failed to advise them about SIJS, which the siblings would have applied for because they were abandoned by their father since they were toddlers.
“Jose and Josue are young men who spent nearly half their lives in the United States. They are deeply assimilated and are eligible for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. Had they received effective legal representation, they would likely be lawful permanent residents today, not torn from the only country they call home to face a humanitarian crisis in a country they barely know,” Amaochi said, adding that the brothers have a pending SIJS application since March 27, 2025.
In El Salvador, Josue is nostalgic about his last semester of high school as a senior at Loganville High School. On his phone, he still has a photo of a class curriculum, which he check-marked every time he passed a class — that chart was what kept him on track for graduation, he said, adding that he wishes to get a second opportunity to go back to the country they call home.
“We are not a threat,” he said. “We are not a harm to the country. We can push ourselves to different limits. We believe we can be better citizens than before.”
