Nineteen-year-old Kevin Alfredo Murillo Lucero was in a car with seven others headed to a Twin Cities job site when they were pulled over on Aug. 5.
Immigration agents were targeting another man in the car. They ended up arresting Murillo, an Augsburg University freshman with no criminal record, along with everyone else in the car.
His godmother, Lidia Margarita Riera Alvarado, rushed to Fort Snelling Immigration Court as soon as she heard he had been detained.
“They didn’t want to tell me anything,” Riera told Sahan Journal, describing her desperate search for his whereabouts.
By that afternoon, he had already been transferred to the Sherburne County Jail, one of three U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities in Minnesota. He has no upcoming hearing scheduled yet.
Murillo, who came to Minnesota from Ecuador as an unaccompanied minor, is one of thousands of young people who have arrived in the U.S. in recent years, many fleeing dangerous conditions in their home countries. In Minnesota alone, more than 4,000 unaccompanied minors arrived between 2021 and 2024, according to federal data.
Murillo’s situation shows the precarious situation many young people who entered the United States without parents and legal status face, as they draw increased scrutiny from immigration officials including sudden welfare checks and targeted efforts to deport them.
Murillo spent his summer as a laborer, helping his uncle with odd jobs around the Twin Cities. He planned to go back to Augsburg this fall to finish his bachelor’s degree.
He was headed to a worksite around 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 5, with his three relatives and four friends in the car. About three blocks away from the worksite, Murillo saw four police vehicles and a white truck pull up.
“At the moment I was calm, to be honest, but afterward, when I processed all that was happening, I really felt bad,” Murillo said.
Initially, he thought police officers pulled them over, he said. But he quickly realized it was ICE officers. He can’t recall what officers told him, he said, only they seemed to be looking for someone with a deportation order.
He’s now been at the Sherburne County Jail for almost a month and it’s unclear how long he’ll remain there, his attorney, Evangeline Dhawan-Maloney, said. Augsburg officials are working to grant him a leave of absence and pause his scholarship, she added.
His case has resonated at Augsburg, a small Minneapolis school with a diverse student body.
“This is really painful news to receive as our community heads into the fall semester,” spokeswoman Rachel Farris said in an emailed statement.
She noted that ICE did not notify Augsburg officials ahead of Murillo’s arrest.
“This is somebody that is basically doing everything the right way,” Dhawan-Maloney said. “He’s never missed a court hearing. He’s never been charged with a crime.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed in a statement to Sahan Journal that Murillo wasn’t a target of their enforcement operation. The plan was to arrest a specific person who had a final order of deportation. Instead, officers saw their target entering the same car being driven by Murillo, and they stopped them.
Officers arrested him and the other passengers in the car, Murillo said, including three of his family members and four friends.
“Now, President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem are following the law and ensuring [the] Murillo-Lucero case is heard by a judge,” read the statement. “He [Murillo] is being held in ICE custody pending further proceedings.”
The DHS statement also blamed the Biden administration for an “indefinitely delay” in Murillo’s removal case and allowing him to stay in the United States.
Murillo fled his home country in 2020 and entered the United States as a 14-year-old without a legal guardian. He was released to the care of his relatives living in Minnesota and placed in removal proceedings. Eventually, he submitted an asylum application, which is still pending, at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The pending application placed a temporary pause on his removal case.
He attended Columbia Heights High School and has no criminal history. When he was arrested, he had a valid drivers’ license, his attorney said. He was studying international business at Augsburg.
When asked for specific details on the events leading up to Murillo fleeing Ecuador, Dhawan-Maloney said he faced “fears” of returning to his home country, and declined to provide more information since his asylum application is still pending.
Riera said Murillo was “shy and fearful” of returning to Ecuador when she first met him a few months after he arrived in Minnesota. Murillo was released into the care of his uncle in Minnesota, and her husband is close friends with Murillo’s uncle — that’s how they met.
“He is a very loving kid, it is as if he’s my own kid,” Riera said. Every year, Murillo gives her flowers for Mother’s Day, she added. “He became part of my family.”
Riera said she watched Murillo grow into an “optimistic” and “friendly” man. She also said Murillo was never embarrassed to be part of church activities and encouraged other young people to join.
A few weeks after his arrest, Murillo appeared in front of Immigration Court Judge Amy Zaske to be released from ICE custody on bond.
Zaske agreed with the Department of Homeland Security’s argument that Murillo was not eligible for bond because of recent changes to policy guidelines from last July and denied his request for release on bond, Dhawan-Maloney said. The judge also denied Murillo’s request because he has no family relatives with legal status, making him a flight risk.
“It’s very painful to see that there’s no compassion towards him,” his godmother, Riera, said in response to the judge’s ruling.
Murillo is trying to stay calm and hopes the situation is resolved, but it’s difficult. He wants to be working toward his goals of finishing school, getting a good job and having a family. He’s interested in joining the U.S. Army. His life is here, and he doesn’t feel like there is anything for him in Ecuador.
He’s been in Sherburne County Jail for a month. He wakes up at 6:30 every morning and eats cereal for breakfast every day. It’s hard to not be free, he said, trapped by four walls.
“You can’t see the light,” he said.
He misses being outside. He misses watching and playing soccer with his friends. He misses his dog, Simba. He wants to be starting his second year at Augsburg.
Sometimes he thinks too much in jail, Murillo said. He wonders what if he hadn’t gone to work that day? The job was probably going to earn him about $150, which doesn’t seem worth what he’s suffering through now.
“It’s like going back in time, all those thoughts that I shouldn’t have been there that day,” he said.
Dhawan-Maloney said she is working on different legal strategies to get Murillo released from ICE custody, but she declined to share details. However, she said she informed Murillo that fighting his case may result in a longer period of time in detention — it could take months or years to resolve his case. He has been waiting for about a year so far for an asylum interview with USCIS.
She said DHS’s latest policy guideline changes are aimed to keep immigrants detained in ICE custody to pressure them to accept their deportation instead of seeking legal status and relief.
She also said Murillo’s case is similar to that of Antonia Aguilar Maldonado, 27, who had been detained for three weeks in ICE custody at Kandiyohi County Jail, and entered the United States as an unaccompanied minor. Her attorneys successfully obtained a federal judge’s approval for release in mid-August — the first in the state since July’s DHS policy guideline changes.
The biggest difference is that an immigration judge considered Maldonado eligible for release on bond, but DHS filed an appeal, which forced her to remain in detention. As a result, Maldonado filed a habeas petition to ask a federal judge to release her.
“I do see a lot of similarities in terms of how they entered and DHS’ frankly ridiculous position that they’re subject to mandatory detention,” she said. “It’s clearly been pushed through to try and detain as many people as possible for as long as possible.”
