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Rhinebeck man back at Orange County ICE facility after narrowly avoiding deportation

Gerson Josué Santamaría Turcios
Jenny Friedberg, spotfund.com
Gerson Josué Santamaría Turcios

Supporters of a Rhinebeck man detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement say he is back in New York and continuing to plead his case after almost being deported Friday.

The group “New York Neighbors United” says 23-year-old Gerson Josué Santamaría Turcios was granted an emergency stay by the Board of Immigration Appeals and “pulled off a plane” hours before his scheduled deportation Friday. Jonathan Reinish, a Democratic strategist and spokesperson for the group, calls it a “miracle breakthrough” in the young man’s case.

“I can only imagine what his concerns were, and how terrified he must have been," says Reinish. "You don’t know, today, where someone is going to be deported to. Logic would dictate that it would be to his home nation of Honduras, but we did not know.”

While Santamaría Turcios avoided deportation, Reinish says he was moved out of state. What followed, he says, was a roughly three-day “odyssey” in which Santamaría Turcios was moved between multiple ICE detention centers, including two in Louisiana. 

“Nobody heard from him for a while. We did get a call at 4 a.m. that he was being moved, this time by himself, and then we did not know for about 17 hours where he was," Reinish adds. "Was the stay ignored and was he moved out of the country? We didn’t know.”

Reinish says New York Neighbors United recently learned Santamaría Turcios had been returned to New York. He is now at the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, according to ICE’s online detainee locator.

Friends say Santamaría Turcios, a graduate of Rhinebeck High School, came to the U.S. from Honduras roughly five years ago. After school, he started his own lawn care and landscaping business. He was detained by ICE on July 18 while returning home from a job.

In a statement to WAMC, an ICE spokesperson says Santamaría Turcios is an “illegal alien from Honduras who admitted to unlawfully entering the United States,” and that he’s had a warrant for his deportation since 2023.

Friends and neighbors say Santamaría Turcios does not have a criminal record. They say his arrest on July 18 was essentially collateral damage, and that ICE agents were initially there to arrest someone else that day. The Trump Administration has repeatedly said that it is focused on deporting “dangerous criminals,” but multiple analyses of ICE statistics have shown that a majority of people detained by ICE so far this year have no criminal convictions.

In the weeks since, New York Neighbors United has raised nearly $100,000 to cover Santamaría Turcios’ legal fees. His legal team says he is afraid to go back to Honduras, and is seeking asylum in the U.S. Doing that could take some time: Reinish says he would like to see Santamaría Turcios argue his case from home, rather than Orange County Correctional Facility.

“He has no criminal record whatsoever," Reinish says. "He owns and runs a small business, and has long roots in the community that he loves, and a community that really, really wants to have him back.”

Jesse King is the host of WAMC's national program on women's issues, "51%," and the station's bureau chief in the Hudson Valley. She has also produced episodes of the WAMC podcast "A New York Minute In History."