Welcome to the ICE Age: Cincinnati Family Ordered to Leave U.S. After Teen’s ICE Arrest

This story is part of CityBeat’s “ICE Age” series about the Trump administration’s crackdown on community members who are undocumented.
“Free Emerson” is now a battle cry in Cincinnati’s fight against rampant arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President Donald Trump.

Emerson Colindres, a 19-year-old recent high school graduate, lives on Cincinnati’s west side. His mom, Ada Bell Baquedano Amador, gushed to CityBeat about Colindres’ sweet disposition. An interpreter helped translate the conversation between Amador and CityBeat, but her tears were universally understood. She cried as she described her tight-knit relationship with her only son.

“He always cleaned the house with me,” Amador said. “He was never a kid I had to, like, require to do anything. Anywhere I went, he wanted to go with me; we went to church together. He loves to play basketball with his friends and, honestly, talk. He is such a chatty kid! He just loves talking. He hangs out with his friends all the time, and often his sister’s like, ‘Oh my God, be quiet! You talk too much!’ He’ll sit in my bedroom with me and we’ll talk for two, three hours.”

Now those conversations are mere minutes, starting with a prompt from the Butler County Jail. Amador hasn’t seen her son since he was arrested by ICE agents on June 4.

“It is the most difficult thing I have ever gone through,” Amador said through tears. “I miss him so much. He’s just like the best kid.”

Colindres has no criminal record but he now awaits deportation to his home country of Honduras, a country he hasn’t seen in over a decade, and his mom and sister aren’t far behind.

Westsiders

Amador brought her two young children to the United States in 2014, settling in Cheviot.

“We came here because of the lack of safety in Honduras,” she said. “When we came to the United States, we encountered ICE agents at the border. They let us enter and we had an appointment first in Columbus.”

The family retained an attorney and applied for asylum. While attending regular check-ins with immigration officials, they made a life for themselves in their new community. Amador brought her family to church, worked with a permit serving food and cleaning houses, and attended her son’s soccer games.

Colindres’ love of soccer was born in Honduras but blossomed in the U.S.

“He had played football in Honduras, but the very week we came here, somebody helped him find a team,” she said. “He had really hoped to go to a college and play soccer. The other young men on the team, Galaxy, they had been working with him to try to help him apply. There is a university in Kentucky they had all been looking at that seems to be open to immigrants, and he had hoped to one day turn professional.”

Looking ahead at 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. “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.

From routine check-in to arrest

With no criminal history, a pending U-visa application and perfect check-in attendance with ICE, Amador didn’t assume the worst when she got a call from the agency last week.

“We woke up in the morning around 9 a.m., they called us, they called Emerson, and they said that he needed to come in, that they were going to put an ankle monitor on him,” she said. “We got to the office, they took us back together, and two or three minutes later they separated us and they took Emerson back alone.”

After a few minutes, Amador said officers brought her to another room where Colindres was – it’s the last time she’s seen her son in person.

“He said, ‘Mommy, they’re going to deport me.’ And I said, ‘Why? Our cases have always been together?’” she said. “It really, really disturbed me.”

Amador asked the agents why only Colindres was being detained — their immigration cases are together on one docket.

“They were just saying, ‘Well, just because.’ That was all they would say,” Amador said.

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.

“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.”

But 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 is hitting 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.”

Just one day before Colindres’ arrest, ICE set an arrest record of more than 2,200 arrests in a single day, according to the agency. This comes as senior ICE officials urged officers to “turn the creative knob up to 11” by arresting “collaterals.” These are noncitizen immigrants agents encounter while serving arrest warrants for others, according to internal agency emails viewed by The Guardian. Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said in May that, “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day, and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day.” One of Trump’s biggest campaign promises was to carry out “the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America,” but his administration has not made public the number of ICE arrests involving noncitizens without a criminal record.

In the days after her Colindres’ arrest, Amador searched for an attorney and legal solutions to free her son. Then came another blow.

“I met with ICE on Friday,” she said. “They told me that I now have 30 days to leave the country.”

The directive includes 16-year-old Allison. The family is working to appeal the order.

“I want you to imagine that you jump through every hoop that is put in front of you, and at the end, they still lie to you and they still say, ‘No,’” Amador said.

“Free Emerson”

The same tactic used to arrest Colindres has been seen across the country, and protesters are pushing back.

On June 4, the same day Colindres was detained during his routine check-in, protesters confronted ICE agents in Chicago over arrests during scheduled check-ins with immigration officials. Large-scale protests have raged on in Los Angeles since Friday after targeted ICE raids in a Home Depot parking lot and the Ambiance Apparel clothing manufacturer. Trump sent National Guard and Marine forces to the city without California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval, and officers are using tear gas and rubber bullets against demonstrators and reporters.

Protesters march through the neighborhood near the Butler County Jail on Sunday, June 8 following a rally against recent ICE arrests. Photo: Ryon Tunstull

Locally, roughly 200 people gathered outside the Butler County Jail on Sunday to protest the recent wave of arrests by ICE, with one protester ending up in handcuffs. This protest comes after ICE arrested four men in a Kroger parking lot on Warsaw Avenue in East Price Hill. Those men, along with hundreds of other immigrants, await deportation hearings from inside the Butler County Jail where Sheriff Richard Jones has a special contract with the federal government to house ICE detainees. Sgt. Kim Peters of the Butler County’s Sheriff’s office told CityBeat that the jail has 376 ICE detainees as of June 10. That number is up by 55 since June 3. Sunday’s protest was for all prisoners of ICE, but signs and speeches centered on one detainee in particular: Colindres.

“Free Emerson! Free Emerson!” chanted the crowd, which included family, friends and former school teachers, many wearing shirts with the same phrase.

Greater Cincinnati community members protest outside the Butler County Jail on Sunday, June 8 against recent ICE arrests. Photo: Ryon Tunstull

Bryan Williams, assistant coach of Colindres’ former soccer team, was at the protest. He told CityBeat he’s coached Colindres since he arrived in the U.S.

“He’s the best player on the field every time we’re out there,” he said. “The last few years, he’s really found his voice and he’s coaching. We were trying to figure out a way to get him into college to play soccer. Now we’ve changed our focus to getting him out of jail.”

Colindres’ former high school history teacher, John Klinger, said he’s also a stand-out student.

“He was a critical thinker,” he said. “He’s the type of person that you want around, the type of person you want to stay in a country, the type of person that makes society better.”

Emerson Colindres’ sister (left), mother (middle) and an interpreter (right) address the crowd of protesters outside the Butler County Jail. Photo: Ryon Tunstull

Colindres’ arrest by ICE has been picked up in national media — something his supporters hope will help influence his case and allow him to stay. Klinger wants to see this much energy dedicated to other young immigrants in the same uncertain position.

“I’d caution that we’re careful, that we’re not just romanticizing him, because this can happen to anyone; the response should be the same,” he said. “You know, he is a special kid in a lot of ways. And also, every kid’s special in their own way.”

A GoFundMe has has raised nearly $13,500 for Amador to pay for an immigration lawyer and travel expenses should they be forced to leave the country. The fundraiser goal is $15,000. For now, she awaits the fate of the appeals process. She speaks with her son for about 20 minutes a day on the phone, nothing compared to the usual hours-long chats they used to enjoy at home. During the protest, Amador addressed the crowd through a microphone, her daughter Allison by her side.

“You have no idea what we suffer every night,” she said. “When the night comes, we know that he’s here. He’s somewhere that’s not safe. He’s never spent the night somewhere he’s not supposed to be.”

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