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New Haven, Connecticut (CNN) - The principal's voice was heard through the megaphone system at Wilbur Cross High School with a surprising announcement.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) had arrested a student.
“Everyone was worried and asking everywhere,” said Sandy Martínez Paz, a 17-year-old girl from school. "We wanted to know who it was."
The students then learned that Mario Aguilar, an 18-year-old who enrolled in school the previous year, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at a nearby court where he was charged, following a traffic accident.
It is the type of case that develops frequently in the United States, but that often goes unnoticed or disappears quickly.
At Wilbur Cross, something different happened.
The school where many were still meeting Mario began to fight to bring him back.
Teachers gathered homework to send Mario to the ICE detention center, hoping that his student would not be left behind or feel forgotten. They wrote letters pressing for their release. And they went to court to support him.
The students designed protest posters that said "Free Mario" on the school printer. They put their face on stickers and sold them to raise money for maintenance. And for weeks, they kept their place in Spanish class empty, waiting for him to return.
- ICE agents stopped his car. Then he prevented someone from being arrested inside
A poster dedicated to Mario Aguilar was hung in the hall of Wilbur Cross High School in New Heaven, Connecticut. Since ICE arrested Mario in September, students, teachers and school administrators have pressed for his release.
Now that they support Mario at school they are preparing for another demonstration while they wait for the decision of an immigration judge in their asylum case this week, without being moved by the fact that so far, their efforts have not influenced the authorities.
Many feel that the dangers of doing nothing are too great. If Mario is deported to Guatemala, a country he fled from, they fear it may be a death sentence.
And if they don't defend it, they fear that nobody will.
He went to court alone and was left in ICE custody
Mario Aguilar went alone to the court in Milford, Connecticut, on September 10 to face the charges against him.
After a car accident a month earlier, police arrested him on suspicion of drunk driving, operating a motor vehicle without a license and not insuring a private motor vehicle. He was released from custody with the promise to appear in court.
The young man's defenders say he crashed into a parked car after his cell phone slipped off the board and bent down to pick it up. They argue that a breathalyzer test was never performed and that the charge for driving under the influence of alcohol had not been maintained in court.
But a judge of the state court never had the opportunity to hear that argument.
When the 18-year-old was put in the court row, someone said his name.
He turned around, and moments later, he was in ICE custody.
- ICE arrested almost 100 undocumented immigrants. More than 500 children missed school the next day
_ Liz Demsky, Counselor of the Cross School, has a sticker that asks for Mario's release on his phone. She says she is worried about the coming verdict of the judge in the case. “I am scared of what may happen with the students here. How will it affect them?
"Deportation officials arrested Mario Andres Aguilar Castanon, an illegally present Guatemalan citizen, in Milford High Court for immigration violations," ICE spokesman John Mohan said in a statement, adding that expulsion proceedings are pending. .
Mohan said the teenager was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents near the southwest border in March 2018 and issued a notice to appear in immigration court before being released from custody.
"He did not appear in immigration court," Mohan said; Mario's lawyers dispute this claim.
They say that Mario was 16 when he arrived in the United States from Guatemala in 2018 as an “unaccompanied minor”, the term used by the United States government for children crossing the border alone, without parents or guardians. Advocates say they are not aware of having received any paperwork about a court date when he was released from US custody.
No one at Wilbur Cross knew anything about this until the week of September 10. In high school where I was taking classes like Geometry, History of the modern world and participated in the band, only one thing was clear: Mario had been at his desk on Monday. By Tuesday he was gone.
For days, the school thought it had disappeared
Mia Breuler still remembers the fear she felt when she learned that her student had disappeared.
He searched frantically for days.
The school counselor knew that Mario was not a student who missed so many classes or stopped appearing in the store where he worked filling the shelves.
So Breuler called everyone who came up with the more questions that crossed his mind.
Had he been injured? Had the gangs attacked him? Or had he gotten into some kind of problem?
There were no signs of him in local hospitals. The police also did not know where he had gone.
Counselor Mia Breuler called hospitals and the police after Mario disappeared. Days later he knew he was in an ICE detention center.
"An agent told me: 'Are you sure you're not with a girlfriend or something?'"
Breuler knew that had happened, but still, there were no signs of his student.
A missed call that Mario's cousin received from a Massachusetts number eventually led the counselor to call the Bristol County Corrections House in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where authorities confirmed that Mario was being held.
That, says Breuler, was the "time to intervene."
“It was shocking at all kinds of levels. It was very annoying. I was full of anxiety because I was thinking, 'What do I do now? … Where I go? … Where do I start trying to get help for this guy? ”
Despite having been unable to communicate with his family for weeks, Mario called his school.
Breuler talked to him almost every day.
When he heard his voice, he didn't let his anxiety show.
She asked him if he felt safe. She told him not to lose hope.
Breuler wanted him to know that he was not alone.
- Trump says he will suspend aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador if the immigrant caravan doesn't stop
The principal was moved by her missing student
Wilbur Cross principal Edith Johnson stood on the steps of the New Haven City Hall, wearing a jacket with the official colors of the school, red and white.
"Cross pride!" The crowd shouted when she took the microphone. The students around him cheered.
But the mood became bleak when Johnson began to discuss how Mario's arrest had shaken her.
"Our school community is suffering," Johnson said surrounded by local news cameras. "Missing in our classrooms, in our halls, in our cafeteria."
The photos and posters about Mario's case are not the only ones called to action on the walls of Wilbur Cross. A quote from Mahatma Gandhi is painted in the lockers on the third floor of the school.
Johnson did not plan to get excited at the rally that October day. She has been principal of Wilbur Cross since 2013. And as a school leader of some 1,600 students, she has seen many struggling to deal with the trauma. But nothing like this - a student detained by ICE - had happened during his time there.
While talking about his student, he began to think about the history of his own family, how his parents fought when they arrived in New York from Puerto Rico in the 40s and 50s. He thought about how lonely and scared that Mario should be detained, and In the desire I had to learn. The tears began to flow.
She told the crowd that in her career as an educator and administrator, she had lost too many students to violence and tragedy.
"And now, another terrifying variable that will surely take students out of the course," he said, "ICE arrests."
Mario's teacher attended her asylum audience
The day Mario presented his asylum case in a Boston immigration court, Mary Pérez Estrada saw him from across the room and greeted him.
The Spanish teacher's heart sank when she saw him try to raise his hand to return his greeting. Could not. His hands were chained.
Spanish teacher Mary Pérez Estrada says she thinks about Mario every day when she looks at her attendance sheet. His name is the first on the list.
It was a week before Thanksgiving. Mario had only been in his class for a few weeks when he was arrested, but she had already seen his promise as a student. He especially highlighted the way he asked questions and took extra work. I had told him that I dreamed of becoming a biologist. In a questionnaire that made the students complete at the beginning of the year, when asked to describe something interesting about himself, he wrote: "I like to work and strive, despite being alone in this country."
When the assistant principal of the school asked the teachers to gather the homework to send him, Pérez Estrada took out books from his personal collection that he hoped would help him escape, even if he was trapped inside the walls of a detention center.
She put smiley faces inside the covers to keep her mood.
He thought about it every morning in the classroom, and every time he gave his third-class Spanish class. His last name, Aguilar, remains the first on the attendance list. For weeks, the students kept their desk empty, waiting for him to return.
While Mario spoke in court and detailed how he had fled the persecution of gangs in Guatemala, Pérez Estrada hoped that the judge would see what she saw in his student, someone who deserves a chance.
The judge did not fail that day. He told the court that he would announce his decision on December 12.
Pérez Estrada went out to share what he had seen with dozens of students and activists who had been waiting for news about what happened.
Some 1,600 students attend Wilbur Cross High School. Principal Edith Johnson says she was surprised that ICE had arrested the student.
"Mario, we love you," the students sang before getting on a bus to return to New Haven.
“Mario, we are with you.
“Mario, we are fighting with you.
"We believe in you.
"We support you.
"Everyday.
“Even after today.
“We will be with you.
“Because we love you.
“Because you are family.
"Because you are from our community."
Inside, they hoped he could hear their voices.
Students are making a video to share their story.
Gabriela González did not know Mario before. Most students did not, he says. But lately, he has spent a lot of free time learning his story.
The senior at Wilbur Cross studied film at the school's International Academy of Arts and Digital Sciences. Now he is helping to make a movie for an entire school assembly to teach his classmates about this case and why it is important.
In a conference room near the principal's office on a Friday afternoon, he questions the students of the school's "Cross in Action" immigrant advocacy group about the case.
"Why is this important?" He asks.
“Children in school are stressed and worried because they are close to home,” replies a student. "And they are afraid because they probably think: 'What happens if I am next?'"
Gabriela González, a senior student, says she learned a lot while making a video about Mario's case. "It's helping the story come to light," he says, "so that people finally realize what is really happening in front of them in their own communities."
“It is a story that should be heard everywhere. It is something that is not new. It has not just started happening. It's something that is happening all over the country, ”says another student.“ And everyone needs to know the reality faced by the people who come here. Not that it is easy for them. They spend so much and people don't understand it or don't see it. ”
While taking a break from an afternoon of interviews, Gonzalez notes that only Mario's closest friends knew him before. They have shared stories with her about him, how they walked together to school or went out to eat. But now, she says, even students who never met him can see the symbolism in their history.
“He was not known before, but now there are literally posters around the school with his face everywhere. People did not know about him because he was just a normal student. … But now the fact that they only took this ordinary student, his whole life has turned upside down because it is from another place, it shows that this can happen to anyone, ”she says. "And it should not happen to anyone, because we are all trying to live our lives as teenagers or ordinary people walking down the street."
Your task was 'rejected' and returned to the sender
An immigration judge in Boston is expected to decide Mario's fate on Thursday. If the judge denies your asylum application, your lawyers say they will appeal the ruling and continue to fight the government's efforts to deport him.
And in the meantime, if he remains detained, they say they will continue trying to take him homework.
So far, they have not had luck.
The English teacher Cynthia Clampitt wrote instructions for Mario in sticky notes in the homework package she sent him.
Attorney Dalia Fuleihan says she tried to send the task to the Bristol County Corrections House, first in a meeting in person with her client, and then by the United States mail as they told her she could only deliver legal paperwork.
He received the homework envelope he had sent last month, stamped with a “Return to sender” stamp. Rejected". A handwritten note on the stamp said: "Name unknown" and "Identification number required."
When asked why the task was returned, an ICE spokesman said the agency does not comment on issues, claims or accusations that "are not related to the status of a detainee's compliance."
Back at Wilbur Cross, Mario's teachers say they are surprised that he didn't receive the homework or the books they tried to send him. For them, it is another reminder that their student belongs to a classroom, not a prison cell.
Fuleihan has the envelope returned in his office at the New Haven Legal Assistance Association while resolving the following steps. Inside, for now, teachers' messages remain unread.
A teacher scribbled instructions on yellow sticky notes placed on different pages of the package.
He put a task that Mario started on one of his first days of class at the top of the pile, entitled: “Who am I? My past, present and future hopes and dreams. ”
On the first page, Mario wrote his name, said where he was from and drew a picture of himself.
He wrote that he liked music and did not like avocados.
"Mario - Finish!" Says the teacher's sticky note. "This is important".
The pages that describe your future are still blank.
- History by Catherine E. Shoichet, of CNN; photographs by Will Lanzoni of CNN.
Immigration deportationICE