University of Florida Student Sent to ICE Detention Facility Over Expired Driver’s License
A student at the University of Florida is being held at a detention facility in Miami after he was pulled over and found to be driving with an expired license and registration tag.
Twenty-seven-year-old international student Felipe Zapata Velásquez, who is in the country on a student visa, was arrested by the Gainesville Police Department on March 28 over the infractions.
Zapata Velásquez, a Colombian national, was reportedly sent to the Krome Detention Center in Miami and has not been heard from since he was taken there on April 1. As noted by the Miami New Times, he does not appear in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee database. The New Times reported:
After graduating from Santa Fe College in 2023, the UF International Center assisted him with the transition to UF, according to the Independent Florida Alligator.
Under current regulations, the U.S. Department of State can revoke non-immigrant visas, including F-1 visas, for people arrested for driving under the influence or similar offenses.
According to NTN24, ICE gave Zapata Velásquez two options post-arrest: go to jail while his case is resolved in immigration court or sign his own deportation order.
Zapata Velásquez’s detention and pending deportation is just one of several instances in which university students in the country lawfully have been targeted for detention and deportation by President Donald Trump’s administration. Over the last several weeks, federal agents have arrested students who, despite not being charged with a crime, remain in federal detention facilities after they publicly criticized Israel. Last month, recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil was apprehended in front of his pregnant wife. Two weeks later, masked federal agents arrested Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student, on a sidewalk in Somerville, Massachusetts.
The Trump administration has also sent more than 250 Venezuelan nationals it says are gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador without any discernible due process. On Sunday, 60 Minutes reported that it could find no criminal record for at least 75% of the people sent there by the U.S. In one instance, the administration admitted it mistakenly deported a Maryland father of three named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, but insisted it is under no obligation to bring him back. A lawyer for Abrego Garcia successfully argued in U.S. District Court that the administration should return the deportee. The District Court ruling was upheld by a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, but on Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts stayed the lower court’s order.
