SMC student, an aspiring nurse, detained and deported by ICE
The student described in this article gave explicit permission for his name and story to be shared.
On May 5, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Santa Monica College (SMC) student and aspiring nurse Tony Lopez, according to a bulletin released on May 13 by SMC’s Senior Administration and Federal Action Impact Analysis Team. ICE then deported Lopez to Mexico.
Lopez, a student in his twenties, was born in Mexico and moved to the United States when he was 12 years old. His classmate and friend Keeyana Soltani stated she doesn’t think he wasn’t fluent in Spanish. To her knowledge, he was a green card holder, something he reiterated to the agents who detained him.
He lived in an apartment with roommates in Los Angeles and commuted to SMC each day by bus to attend class and study. He often studied in the library and on the Cayton Center balcony.
Lopez was dedicated to becoming a nurse, and was well on his way. At the time of his detainment, he had two courses left to finish at SMC: anatomy and microbiology.
“He liked the idea of helping people, and he was interested in medicine,” said Soltani. “He (also) said he wanted a stable and practical job.”
A photograph of Lopez circulated among students on social media starting May 12. SMC’s police department confirmed the image was taken on May 5. In the image, Lopez is shown on 12032 West Pico Boulevard and escorted by two agents in green ICE uniforms.
Lopez is wearing a backpack in the photo, taken by a friend of his. He was just a few blocks away from the main campus, where he was scheduled to meet Soltani to study together.
After the detainment, Lopez called Soltani to explain what had happened.
“He was just getting off the bus walking to school, like any other day,” Soltani recounted. “And they, not cornered him, but they snuck up on him. That’s the way he put it.”
According to Lopez’s account, he tried to explain that he was a legal resident of the United States. Then, he said, one of the officers pulled out a gun. They subsequently detained Lopez.
“He also mentioned something about them spitefully tricking him into signing papers,” said Soltani.
Lopez later texted Soltani that he was deported to Mexico. The only family he was able to reach there was his aunt and her children.
According to their May 13 announcement, the college verified Lopez is safe and is working on finding legal counsel. Soltani affirmed he is in contact with several law firms and plans to fight for his case.
Soltani described Lopez as a “really sweet guy.”
“Everyone in our class was just devastated because he was just nice, you know, he was encouraging, he was friendly. He talked to everybody. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body.”
Soltani and Lopez were both taking Anatomy 1 with Professor Chris Grant, a four-hour laboratory course requiring 15 to 20 hours of studying a week. Soltani described the lab as “very intense,” and the entire class studied together frequently in the Learning Resource Center.
Soltani also shared that the anxiety-ridden class was prone to break out in quarrels, which Lopez would try to mediate.
“He was never a part of that. He was always like, guys, let’s work this out, let’s love each other.”
After his detainment, Soltani said, Lopez texted her about maintaining her progress in the class, and encouraged her to stick it out: “When he was texting me about this, he was (also) like, I hope you do well in anatomy, like, on the course, I don’t want you to fail, I want you to succeed.”
Since they collaborated on everything in the class, Lopez reached out to Soltani first in order to correspond with the rest of the class and their professor. Very quickly after she shared what had happened to him, Soltani observed palpable fear among her immigrant classmates — some of whom haven’t shown up to class since.
Several of them communicated to Soltani that their classmate’s deportation made them feel unsafe on campus. On May 12, when Lopez corresponded with Soltani again, he asked her to distribute the photograph of him, and share his story.
“He said he didn’t want it to happen to anyone else,” she said. “He thinks that people should be thinking about it beforehand in case something were to happen.”
ICE’s Los Angeles Field Office, which oversees Enforcement and Removal Operations in the city, did not respond to the Corsair’s inquiries by the time of publication.
This is a developing story.