Teen soccer player released by ICE asks for chance to stay in U.S.: “I’m doing the right things”

Chicago — Just a few days ago, 18-year-old Ricardo Hernandez-Navarrete was stuck in an immigration detention center in Kentucky, fearing his dreams of playing professional soccer would be derailed by the specter of deportation 

On Thursday evening, Hernandez-Navarrete was back in Chicago to receive his high school diploma, after being unexpectedly released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

“Good, excited,” Hernandez-Navarrete told CBS News when asked how he felt moments after graduation.

The Colombian-born teen had spent over two months in ICE custody, after being arrested, alongside his mother, in March during what they expected would be a routine immigration appointment in Chicago. Being of legal age, he was separated from his mother and shuffled by ICE across the country, held in detention facilities in Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Ohio and Kentucky.

In his first national television interview, Hernandez-Navarrete said his detention was “hard to understand.”

“I couldn’t play soccer,” he said. “That’s the most important thing in my life.”

Not being able to see or talk to his mother for weeks, he added, was also painful.

“I had never been separated from him for so long,” his mother, Martha Liliana Navarrete, told CBS News in Spanish.

ICE released her last week, after a judge’s order. She said she worried her son would be deported without her, dooming her dream of seeing him playing for a professional soccer club in the U.S.

Hernandez-Navarrete was released by ICE on Tuesday, just two days before his graduation. It’s unclear why ICE ordered his release, since an immigration judge denied him bond that same day, according to Hernandez-Navarrete’s lawyer.

But the high school graduate said he’s just happy to be back in Chicago, with his family, friends and teammates, who had been urging ICE to release him for weeks. He said he’s already committed to playing soccer for Truman College in Chicago.

Despite their release, Hernandez-Navarrete and his mother still face the possibility of deportation. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said the family entered the U.S. illegally in 2022, when Hernandez-Navarrete was 15. The agency said the teen would receive “full due process.”

The U.S. immigration court system will now adjudicate whether the family should be allowed to stay in the country legally and permanently, their lawyer, Kelli Fennel, told CBS News.

In the meantime, Hernandez-Navarrete was instructed to check in with ICE every two weeks, and was fitted with a watch he cannot remove so the agency can track his movements. He also has to submit photos of himself every day and alert ICE if plans to travel away from the region.

Hernandez-Navarrete’s high school coach, Enrique Cervantes, said his former player is clearly not one of the dangerous criminals the Trump administration routinely cites when justifying its aggressive deportation crackdown.

Hernandez-Navarrete, Cervantes added, is “someone who’s going to school, working, trying to better themselves and trying to see a future at the collegiate level.”

“Ricardo does not fit the description of the ‘worst of the worst,'” he said.

Asked what he would tell U.S. government officials to convince them to let him stay in the country legally, Hernandez-Navarrete said they should consider the fact he lacks a criminal record, as well as his ambitions.

“They can see that I’ve been in high school, I graduate(d) and I’m going to be in college,” he said. “So I’m doing the right things. So maybe for that, I can get the opportunity to be here.”