Nineteen year-old Alex had no idea that a stray doodle of a stylized blue devil — his high school mascot — could trigger a chain of events that would end in his deportation.
The Huntington High School sophomore came to the U.S. alone just a year and a half before. He was an enthusiastic student who worked hard and earned good grades, but an absent-minded drawing got him falsely flagged as a gang member and ultimately led to his arrest by federal immigration officials.
His story illustrates a larger phenomenon under the Trump administration in which schools have become a tool of law enforcement, with immigrant students caught in the cross-hairs.
Hannah Dreier wrote about Alex's story for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, and she spoke with WNYC's Richard Hake.