‘Handcuffed like we’re criminals’: Ohio teen soccer star recounts deportation

The Ohio high school graduate and soccer standout who was recently deported from the US to Honduras despite having no arrest record has described being “handcuffed like we’re some big criminals” for the entirety of his deportation flight.

“To me, it was kind of more traumatizing because I haven’t been to my birth country in years,” Emerson Colindres, 19, who was brought from Honduras to the US by his family at age eight, said to the Cincinnati news station WCPO in an interview over the weekend.

He also told the outlet that his pre-deportation detention before leaving the US was “mentally draining”, mainly because he spent all but two hours daily sitting in a jail cell “doing nothing”.

Colindres’s remarks to WCPO were some of his first about an experience vividly contradicting claims that the immigration crackdown spearheaded by Donald Trump since he began his second presidency in January has prioritized targeting dangerous criminals.

He was a star soccer player at Gilbert A Dater high school, had no criminal record, and was attending a regularly scheduled appointment with Immigration and Customers Enforcement (Ice) in Cincinnati when he was detained on 4 June. It was mere days after his graduation from Dater.

Teachers and soccer teammates from Dater joined protests that gathered at the local jail where he was held until his transfer to an Ice facility in Louisiana. Then, on 18 June, the Trump administration deported Colindres to a country where he had not lived for about 11 years.

Speaking to WCPO from Honduras on a video phone call on Saturday, Colindres said he was relieved to no longer be jailed. “You were in there 22 hours in the cell doing nothing,” Colindres said of his confinement. “That’s crazy – like, that’s all … mentally draining.”

He argued that “a lot of people” on his ensuing deportation flights had no arrest records in the US, “like myself included”.

Nonetheless, “the whole flight I was handcuffed like we’re some big criminals,” Colindres added.

Protesters hold signs during a protest by supporters of Emerson Colindres in Hamilton, Ohio, on 8 June. Photograph: Megan Jelinger/Reuters

Colindres’s family came to the US with him without documentation in 2014, requesting asylum in connection with claims of being targeted by gang activity in Honduras. Their asylum application was denied, and a judge issued a final removal order for him and his family in 2023.

The Trump administration has insisted that its immigration crackdown is mainly targeting criminals with adjudicated final orders of removal. Yet recent data shows a surge in people with no criminal history being targeted, including students, with a Trump administration spokesperson publicly saying: “If you are in the country illegally and a judge has ordered you to be removed, that is precisely what will happen.”

Being in the US without legal status is not a criminal offense – it is a civil violation.

Colindres’s mother and sister weren’t detained when he was, but WCPO reported that they were told to leave the US within 30 days.

They were expecting to reunite with Colindres in Honduras in the coming days, he reportedly said Saturday.

“Hopefully I get to see them soon cause I really miss them a lot,” Colindres said.

In a separate interview with the Cincinnati area’s WXIX news station, Colindres outlined his plans to try out for local Honduran soccer teams as he continued his dreams of turning professional in the sport.

He told both WXIX and WCPO that the demonstrations prompted by his deportation made him realize “people really love me and really would do a lot of things for me”.

“Things happen for a reason,” Colindres said to the latter of those stations. “Just don’t lose faith.”