Sources familiar with Emerson Colindres‘ status tell CityBeat the 19-year-old Cincinnati resident was deported this morning to his birth country of Honduras. These sources tell CityBeat that Colindres, a recent high school graduate, was told last night that he would be deported at 7 a.m. this morning.
Flight tracker information provided to CityBeat shows him landing in San Pedro Sula, which sources say is about four hours away from his known family in the country. Colindres has not set foot in Honduras since his family fled to the U.S. when he was 8 years old.
His deportation comes as lawyers representing the teen filed motions to block his deportation, but those motions didn’t stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from transferring Colindres out of the Butler County Jail to a Louisiana ICE prison on Monday.
Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio, the organization providing legal representation for Colindres, provided a statement to CityBeat following the news of his transfer out of the Butler County Jail. The organization described ICE’s treatment of Colindres as “extremely disturbing.”
“This sort of clandestine and frightening treatment of a non-criminal 19-year-old is extremely disturbing, particularly because Emerson in no way matches the description of those whom the government has stated are priorities for deportation,” the statement reads. “We stand in solidarity with Emerson and his family, joining the community in prayer and appealing for mercy.”
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Where this leaves his family
Colindres has no criminal record, and even though he’s on the same immigration docket as his mother and younger sister, he was the only one in the family to be arrested and deported. His family also had a pending visa application. Still, Colindres was arrested by ICE during a routine check-in at the agency’s Blue Ash office on June 4; his mother and sister were given 30 days to leave the country two days later.
Colindres’ mother, Ada Bell Baquedano Amador, has previously described to CityBeat the confusion in that moment; she has no idea why ICE took her son and not her.
“They were just saying, ‘Well, just because.’ That was all they would say,” Amador told CityBeat through a translator.
Panicked, Amador told agents she would need to be deported, too. She couldn’t bear the thought of her son being sent to Honduras alone. The country is entirely unfamiliar to the teen.
“He’s lived here since he was eight years old,” she said. “He knows we’re from the south part of the country, but he doesn’t know anything there other than the language.”
Amador is also thinking of her daughter, 16-year-old Allison, who needs to stay in the U.S. to receive medical care that isn’t available in Honduras. Amador told CityBeat that Allison is being treated for epilepsy, which Amador pays for out of pocket. She said Allison also has anxiety, and her brother’s arrest by ICE hit her hard.
“She’s not doing well,” she said. “You might think that this kind of stuff would feel normal for us, but it’s not. She’s really, really not doing well.”
Background on Colindres’ immigration status
Colindres has lived in Cheviot with his mother and 16-year-old sister since arriving in the U.S. in 2014. Amador said her family fled Honduras due to a “lack of safety.”
Looking ahead to the future, the family hoped their asylum case would put them on a stronger path to American citizenship. But in 2019, the family’s asylum case was denied, so they appealed. An order of removal was issued for the family, but that doesn’t mean they were required to self-deport. CityBeat confirmed the legal nuance with an immigration attorney who declined to speak on the record. Under the law, it is up to the Attorney General to remove noncitizens from the country who have an order of removal or subject them to supervision conditions. In Amador’s case, ICE approved the latter for her family. They were told to attend routine check-ins with immigration officials, and Amador, who has no criminal record, was given an ankle monitor.
“For the past 11 years, I have done every single thing that is asked of me,” Amador told CityBeat in a previous interview. “I’ve been at every [immigration] appointment, I’ve answered every phone call. There has not been a single thing they’ve asked of me that I failed to do. Everything they asked I say, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes.’”
Their asylum appeal was denied in 2023, but they’ve had a separate application pending for U nonimmigrant status, also known as a U-visa. The program grants legal status for noncitizens and qualifying family members who have been victims of certain crimes here in the United States, according to ICE. Applicants can still be granted a U-visa even if they have a removal order or check-in agreement with ICE.
This is a developing story.
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This article appears in Jun 11-24, 2025.