A sign at the entrance of Suffolk County Community College. Sara Lizeth Lopez Garcia, a student at Suffolk County Community College (SCCC), was arrested by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), along with her mother, this May. ZOIE MASTRIANO/THE STATESMANUpon entering office on Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump acted quickly to implement one of his arguably most well-known campaign promises: mass deportations. On the day of his inauguration, he signed an executive order titled “PROTECTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AGAINST INVASION.” Before his term began, he appointed Tom Homan as “The Border Czar” on Nov. 10, 2024. Homan has been working with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in fulfilling a daily apprehension quota of migrants.President Trump has portrayed the deportation program as targeting the “worst of the worst.” During his remarkably impartial address to Congress back in March, Trump claimed that his administration was taking out “criminals, killers, traffickers and child predators.” But how true is that? Let’s look at a local case for reference. Back in May, 20-year-old Sara Lizeth Lopez Garcia, along with her mother, were arrested by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The ICE agents that came to their basement apartment in Mastic, N.Y. claimed they were looking for the previous tenant who was no longer living there. Lopez Garcia, a student at Suffolk County Community College (SCCC), informed the agents of her Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) status, an immigration classification for anyone 21 and under who has been abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent, which serves as protection from deportation and provides a potential pathway to a green card. Despite her status and ICE knocking on the wrong door, the agents took Lopez Garcia and her mother away. The agents left behind Lopez Garcia’s 17-year-old brother because he was a minor, and according to CBS News, he is currently living with a neighbor in Mastic.Neither Lopez Garcia nor her mother were given bond, despite having Social Security numbers, valid work permits and no criminal records. They were sent to several detention facilities in New York and New Jersey before they ended up in a detention facility in Louisiana. Lopez Garcia, who first came to the U.S. in 2020 as a minor, agreed to a “voluntary” departure, a decision that may have been made with pretenses. According to Garcia’s fiance, a lawyer told her that if she fought her deportation, she could be in detention for six to nine months, a claim that several other lawyers called unlikely. Despite outrage from members of the local community and her professors, she was deported to Colombia on July 31, 2025. Lopez Garcia was not your average college student. According to Cynthia Eaton, an English professor at the SCCC Eastern Campus who had her as a student, she was “not only bright and dedicated to learning but also consistently [wrote] essays that [focused] on doing good things for others.” She was an honors student and had a 3.9 GPA. She was a member of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and a peer mentor on campus. She was so talented at her job as peer mentor that SCCC administrators gave Lopez Garcia their “student employee of the year” award in the spring. A week later, she would be detained by ICE. Lopez Garcia also had plans beyond her academic activities. She was planning on getting married to her fiancé, Santiago Ruiz Castilla, in August. They met while she was attending William Floyd High School, where she graduated from in 2022. To utilize her skills as an interior design major, she took part in a local volunteer project working to redesign a bedroom for a domestic violence shelter. Lopez Garcia had been looking forward to renovating and painting the space in the fall semester, but that won’t be happening. Many members in the local community were outraged at her detention and deportation because of her SIJ status. President John Durso and Executive Director Ryan Stanton of the Long Island Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), said in a joint statement that her SIJ status should have protected her from deportation, and one of her attorneys claimed her case was “mishandled from the beginning,” according to Newsday. New York State Assemblyman Phil Ramos (D-Brentwood) called the detention an example of how ICE endangers immigrant communities and is calling on his fellow legislators to pass the New York For All Act, which would prevent local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE without a court order. Lopez Garcia’s case is not an outlier. According to an analysis by ABC News, the Trump administration’s efforts to primarily deport the “worst of the worst” have not materialized. In the first few months of his administration, 23% of those arrested had no criminal history, according to the data. But starting in late May, there was a clear shift: between then and early July, 70% of those apprehended had no criminal conviction, and 44% had no criminal history at all. President Trump’s claims about deporting the “worst of the worst” first are lies. Lopez Garcia is not a violent criminal or a gang member. She neither was a rapist nor eating anyone’s cats. She had never even committed a traffic violation. She is a college student — an outstanding one at that — who tried to transform her life and use her skills to benefit her community. Ironically, President Trump said in June 2024 on the All-In podcast that students who graduate college should automatically receive a green card with their diploma. But within hours, Karoline Leavitt, who previously served as the national press secretary for the Trump campaign before she was promoted to White House press secretary, clarified that there would be a vetting process that would exclude “radical Islamists, Hamas supporters and America haters.” There is no evidence that Lopez Garcia was any of those things, and despite being an upstanding student, she was deported anyway. One can also just look at the Trump administration’s rhetoric to see that there are other priorities beyond going after violent criminals. On Aug. 5, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in an attempt to recruit people for ICE, tweeted, “Serve your country! Defend your culture! No undergraduate degree required!” In another tweet by the same account, DHS told Americans to “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage,” while displaying a painting of a white couple holding a newborn in a wagon you’d see from the Oregon Trail. Last time I checked, DHS was not meant to “Defend your culture,” but to protect the country from terrorists and violent criminals. A year ago, the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division of ICE focused on serious crimes like human and drug trafficking. But with the quotas put upon them by administration officials, one HSI agent told The Atlantic that they didn’t have time to focus on more serious crimes like child exploitation and instead had to focus on easier targets like gardeners. ICE has been accused of racial profiling in their efforts to apprehend undocumented immigrants. ICE has conducted raids at Home Depots and farms, looking for potential undocumented migrants who are working. Legal immigrants attending college in the United States, like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, found themselves detained for weeks, not because of their immigration status, but because of their political views. ICE’s use of masks and plain clothes on agents has caused many to refer to them as secret police. When Lopez Garcia was apprehended, she claimed that the ICE agents did not have any visible identification and said she thought they were local police at the time. Lopez Garcia’s case also highlights criticism of the Trump administration’s denial of due process for suspects, as both Lopez Garcia and her mother showed up to immigration court without a lawyer. No one should be lost about the goal of mass deportations, especially when you consider just how much this administration loathes diversity and liberal democracy. Just last week, the State Department announced they were reviewing all 55 million active visas of people who applied to come to the United States legally for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States.”When Lopez Garcia arrived in Colombia, she was greeted by the Colombian Air Force and the local Red Cross with free food and other amenities. She was reunited with her fiance after being detained for almost two months. She plans on finishing her degree at SCCC online. In an interview with Newsday, she was asked how she felt about her treatment by the United States. She responded, “I’m just disappointed with America. It was illegal what they did to me.” Lopez Garcia’s deportation proves that the Trump administration is not being honest about its motivations. This immigration crackdown is not about criminals or “the worst of the worst” — it is about stripping the country of its diversity of thought and background through tyrannical means. The evidence is overwhelming: Thousands of others with no criminal record have been detained or deported, while the administration openly pushes rhetoric about “defending” America’s culture and heritage, a dog whistle borrowed straight from the alternative right. When immigration enforcement relies on masks, racial profiling and intimidation, it is not law and order — it is authoritarianism. We all should be disappointed and outraged by what is occurring in our country. About the Contributor Jonathan Pascuzzi is an Assistant News Editor for The Statesman and a junior majoring in political science. Jonathan formerly attended Suffolk County Community College, where he received an associate degree in political science and wrote for the student newspaper. After graduating from Stony Brook, he plans on attending either law school or grad school for poli sci.