Austin American-Statesman: Austin high school senior detained by ICE after traffic stop rattles Northeast campus
D’marco Oliveros, an 18-year-old senior at Northeast Early College High School, remembers waking up for school last Friday to a 2:05 a.m. message from his friend and classmate Luis Fernando Cabrera.
The photo Cabrera sent showed the cobalt blue lights of a police car glowing in his driver’s side mirror, illuminating the night sky.
“They stop you?” Oliveros texted in Spanish, frightened, but he knew to assume the worst. He looked up his friend’s location on his iPhone and found him at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in San Antonio.
Cabrera had been turned over to ICE by a state trooper after the 18-year-old was pulled over on his way home from his closing shift at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen in Northeast Austin, where he worked more than 40 hours a week as a manager.
Cabrera, who came to the U.S. at age 11, was in the country without legal status and awaiting a ruling on his asylum case.
The arrest and detention of the high school senior, whom classmates described as good-natured and kind, have shaken a campus that had been giddily anticipating graduation and the end of the school year, leaving many students rattled and fearful.
“You realize it could happen to anyone because it happened to him,” said Jose Emilio Araujo, 18, who is in Cabrera’s English class. “Everyone knows what’s happening in the country, but it hits you when it's the people you know.”
For students at Northeast Early College High School, Cabrera’s detention feels deeply personal. But his arrest also reflects a continuous surge in immigration enforcement in the Austin area, which has already affectedschoolcommunities.
Austin, along with the portions of Central and South Texas under the San Antonio ICE field office, has experienced some of the highest rates of immigration arrests in the country. Through agreements with the federal government, Texas state troopers have turned over immigrants who are in the U.S. without authorization to federal immigration agents during traffic stops, sometimes after minor or contestable traffic offenses.
Although President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign suggested the administration’s mass deportation initiative would prioritize violent criminals, data analyses by organizations such as the libertarian Cato Institute, along with statements from former ICE officials, have shown the operation has largely affected immigrants with no criminal record and ongoing immigration proceedings.
The administration has since argued that all immigrants without authorization are criminals subject to removal because they lack permission to be in the country.
A search of Travis County records did not turn up any criminal charges against Cabrera.
DPS press secretary Sheridan Nolen said in a statement that Cabrera was stopped due to his vehicle’s expired registration. She touted the agency’s collaboration with federal immigration agents, including through a 287(g) agreement that gives trained officers the authority to detain individuals over immigration infractions.
“When encountering illegal immigrants during traffic stops or other law enforcement operations, all DPS officers — regardless of 287g certification or being assigned to a strike team working alongside our federal partners — know to notify federal law enforcement partners,” Nolen said in the statement. “These agencies have been increasingly responsive to our calls for assistance around the clock.”
‘Fearful about where he is’
Just hours before his arrest, at about 10 p.m., Cabrera had rushed over to the Oliveros house during his work break to devour a pork chop his friend’s mother had prepared for him.
“He was tired of the food there,” Oliveros said, smirkingly referring to Popeyes. The two seniors had chatted excitedly about the suits they had bought for the upcoming dance and about the girl Cabrera was excited to have asked out.
Now, Oliveros said, it’s hard to imagine finishing the school year without the friend he spent lunches and passing periods with every day.
Since the arrest, Cabrera's friend group has grown quieter, mourning the loss of its most talkative member, Oliveros said.
Cabrera was also a well-liked member of his high school soccer team, where he played as a goalkeeper. His coach, Kyle Olson, described him as cooperative, noting that he had graciously accepted a backup role during his senior year after starting the previous two seasons.
"He knew he was going to play that role and accepted it and played the role of being a very supportive, good teammate," said Olson, who described Cabrera as respectful, honest and pretty silly. "The potential he had to be a productive member of our society was very high."
Although the season had ended, the senior soccer players remain a tight-knit group, and Cabrera's detention stunned them, Olson said.
And though many of the students at the immigrant-heavy school in Northeast Austin know someone — even if only indirectly — who has been detained, Cabrera’s detention is the most personal loss many have felt, Olson said.
Olson and a small group of players talked to Cabrera on the phone earlier this week, asking how he was doing and how he felt. But though they kept the conversation light, the phone call offered little reassurance.
"A lot of them are fearful about where he is," Olson said.
Cabrera was born and raised in Mexico by his Honduran parents before they brought him to the United States in 2019. The family says it fled Mexico after a legislator threatened to kill them for reporting the politician’s younger brother for sexually abusing the Cabreras’ teenage daughter.
At the time of his arrest, Cabrera lived with his older sister, Holi Zaday Cabrera, 23, and her 2-year-old son. The siblings were awaiting a December court date in their asylum case and supported themselves through restaurant jobs.
Cabrera typically worked more than 40 hours a week as a manager on the closing shift at Popeyes while balancing soccer and waking up early each morning to take his nephew to daycare, his sister said.
“Fernando puts others in front of him, he’s always trying to help, he is studious and agreeable,” Holi Zaday Cabrera told the Statesman. “He’s never given me a headache.”
An ICE official told the Statesman the agency plans to hold Cabrera until his immigration proceedings conclude.
“Being in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App,” the agency told the Statesman in a statement.
Cabrera is being held at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center, about 100 miles south of Austin.