Just six months ago, Maryland college freshman Maria Flores Garcia was delivering her high school valedictorian speech. Now she’s languishing in ICE detention
Following Republicans’ “extinction-level” defeat in last week’s 2026 midterms, DHS Sec. Markwayne Mullin appeared on Fox News to state that the Trump administration would not back down from the anti-immigrant policies that contributed to the GOP’s historic losses in both the U.S. Congress and statehouses.
“We haven’t slowed at all,” Sec. Mullin stated during the interview. “We’re getting the drug bangers.” But if that were really the case, high school valedictorian and University of Maryland (UMD) freshman Maria Flores Garcia would not be sitting in ICE detention right now. The Washington Post reports that both the valedictorian and her mom, Mirna Cabrera, were abducted by mass deportation agents despite a previous court order blocking their deportation under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Garcia is now being held at Louisiana’s Richwood Correctional Center, a privately-operated detention camp that for many immigrants is a final stop before deportation out of the country.
Just six months ago, Garcia was standing in front of her peers and teachers, delivering a heartfelt valedictorian speech that credited her immigrant parents for her perseverance, values and personal successes, including earning a full ride to study public health at UMD. Now loved ones fear that both the college freshman and her mom will soon “be deported to a country where they know no one.”
A SHINING EXAMPLE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM
“As a student at Parkdale High School in Prince George’s County, Garcia was an international baccalaureate student, National Honor Society member, soccer player and volunteer for PeerForward, a nonprofit aimed at educating youth in under-resourced communities, according to PHS salutatorian Mahlet Mulugeta, who introduced Garcia’s graduation address,” The Washington Post reports.
During that speech, Garcia described “the challenge of starting over” after arriving in the U.S. at nine. “I was the new girl, who struggled to understand words and had to wait for someone to translate even the simplest instructions,” she said. But she did not allow these struggles to limit her goals. Her achievements, she told the audience, were “the product of the long hours worked by my father and the sacrifices made by my mother.”
Immigrant parents, she continued, have had “to leave behind their country with nothing, and work hard day after day to give us everything.”
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FIRST THEY TOOK HER MOTHER; ‘SADLY, SHE WAS DETAINED MINUTES AFTER’
Garcia was with her mom at what they thought was a routine immigration check-in earlier this month. “These annual check-ins had become a routine part of their life in this country,” The Washington Post noted. “So after two hours, when her mother had still not reappeared, she knew something was wrong.” When she spoke to officials at the site, they told her “she could either leave the building or go with her mother,” the report continued. She told them she wanted to go with her mom.
But what Garcia didn’t know is that mass deportation officials had already detained her mother. “Sadly, she was detained minutes after,” her boyfriend, Cesar Saavedra, told NBC Washington. Was this a cruel ploy to abduct her as well? Remember that this is the same agency that once used a five-year-old child as human bait in order to detain his dad.
What is clear is that Garcia and her mom should both be free. Justice Haynes, Garcia’s attorney, said that a 2021 court order granted the pair “a withholding of removal under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, barring deportation to their home country,” The Washington Post noted.
‘THEY ARE GOING AFTER WHOEVER THEY PLEASE’
U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen is among Maryland leaders calling for her release, saying that the Trump administration’s “reckless and out-of-control ICE operations continue to wreak havoc on our communities.”
“Detaining Maria Flores Garcia – a former high school valedictorian and current student at the University of Maryland – puts a clear lie to ICE’s claim that they are going after ‘the worst of the worst.’ They are not,” Sen. Van Hollen said. “They are going after whoever they please, and it’s clear they’re not making our communities any safer. Americans have spoken and they want an end to it. I will continue to push back against ICE’s inhumane tactics and lawlessness, and I’m seeking immediate answers on Maria’s detention, including working to get her released.”
“In a statement, Prince George’s County Executive Aisha N. Braveboy (D) said she was ‘outraged and deeply concerned by Garcia’s arrest,’ calling her and her mother law-abiding residents who were detained while complying with a legally required check-in,” The Washington Post reported. “Maria and her mother should know they are not alone: the people of Prince George’s County stand firmly with them,” Braveboy said. “We are calling for Maria’s immediate release and safe return home.”
THE LAWLESSNESS MUST STOP. ACCOUNTABILITY IS NEEDED
In a letter released this week, America’s Voice and 17 other state and national organizations urged Congressional leaders set to take power in January to act to rein in ICE’s abuses and lawlessness by hauling in White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and other mass deportation architects to testify and moving to freeze all new ICE spending and contracts. The toll from the mass deportation agenda “has been devastating,” they write.
“At least 62 people have died in ICE custody under this administration. Federal immigration agents have killed U.S. citizens, including Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas and Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota,” the letter states. “An estimated 205,000 children, including about 145,000 U.S. citizens, have had a parent detained, a toll illustrated by five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was detained himself after preschool and sent with his father to a family detention center in Texas. And racial profiling is rampant. A Pew Research Center survey found that 46% of U.S. -born Latinos worry that they or someone close to them could be deported, rising to 63% among Latino immigrants. No family should have to live with that fear.”
Including Garcia and her loved ones. “Like, why would a valedictorian student, obviously going to college, doing everything right, and then gets detained with her mother?” asked Saavedra. “It’s just like, that’s totally not what should not be going on in this country at this moment.”
