Morgan Fischer
Audio By Carbonatix
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from an ICE spokesperson.
***
On Wednesday afternoon, dozens of Tempe students walked out of Cecil Shamley School to protest the detention of one of their classmates by Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside the school a day earlier.
Around 10 a.m. on Tuesday, ICE detained 14-year-old Dilan Manay Paredes outside the K-8 school near North Miller and East McKellips roads. Paredes was in eighth grade and set to be “promoted” to high school in a few days. The school’s principal, Bronwyn Sternberg, wrote in a letter to parents that federal agents didn’t enter the school and Paredes’ mom “signed the student out of school in accordance with school procedures.”
Paredes and his mother, 47-year-old Margot Paredes Ortiz, have been taken to Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas, according to Rep. Greg Stanton and state Sen. Lauren Kuby, who represent Tempe. The controversial family detention facility is one of two in the country. Since its reopening in 2025, the facility has been marred by accusations of poor food quality and limited access to medical care and education.
“This family should be home tonight, celebrating their son’s 8th grade promotion,” Stanton wrote in a social media post, “not in federal detention hundreds of miles away.”
On Wednesday, Paredes’ detention inspired students to walk out of the small school, which has an enrollment of 540 students across nine grade levels. At the walkout, one of Paredes’ friends — 14-year-old eighth-grader Alan Esquer — recounted to Phoenix New Times how Paredes was called out of class to meet his mother outside during second period.
Paredes’ face initially lit up when he saw his mom was calling, but his smile quickly faded as his mom shared that she’d been picked up by ICE in a Walmart parking lot. She’d skipped an immigration check-in due to fear of arrest and deportation. Esquer recalled that Paredes’ mom told her son over the phone that she was coming to the school with ICE agents to pick him up because she didn’t want to leave him.
Esquer said that Paredes began to cry after he hung up the phone. He then said a “bad word in Spanish” to Esquer and said, “They got my mom,” Esquer recalled. Paredes then went to the principal’s office, where he sent Esquer several texts in Spanish.
“Just tell them I’m gonna miss you guys,” Paredes wrote to Esquer in Spanish in an Instagram message. “I love you guys a lot. They’re outside. They might send me back to my country.”
In a statement to New Times, ICE spokesperson Fernando X. Burgos wrote that ICE arrested Peredes Ortiz “following a referral from United States Border Patrol, after her vehicle failed to yield as a suspected alien smuggling load vehicle.” Burgos added that she “voluntarily called Cecil Shamley School and requested that her son be released so he could meet her while she was in ICE custody.”
“Claims circulating about an ICE operation, raid, or enforcement action at or near Cecil Shamley School are completely inaccurate and appear to be sensationalized,” Burgos wrote. “ICE did not conduct any such activity at the school.”
Provided by PeopleFirstProject
Promotion ceremony restrictions
Paredes’ detention has left his friends scared and angry.
“We don’t know where he is. He hasn’t texted us,” said classmate Angelique Soto-Martinez through tears. “He was just a kid here and he was so excited to promote. He was so excited to go to high school, and now he’s just gone.”
Clarissa Vela, the founder of PeopleFirstProject, said Paredes’ family traveled to Arizona in 2023 from Ecuador to seek asylum, turning themselves in at the border. Vela wasn’t familiar with the details of their asylum case. She added that Paredes Ortiz’s two older sons, both in their mid-20s, were also detained on Tuesday as they rushed to their mom’s aid in the Walmart parking lot. Both are married with children. Paredes’ father was deported to Ecuador two years ago.
Paredes’ classmates described him as a short, funny ball of energy, an athletic soccer player who was always making his friends laugh. One of Paredes’ friends, Chris Solis, said he was a “bit of a troublemaker, but not that much.”
“He was a good person, really good,” Solis added. “He didn’t deserve this, really.”
Outside the school on Wednesday afternoon, nearly 40 students and parents gathered to protest Paredes’ detention. Protesters chanted “Where is Dilan?” and called for ousting Sternberg, who students said canceled eighth-grade “promotion” events after they began speaking out about Paredes.
Though rumors had spread that Paredes was detained inside the school, that does not appear to be the case. Tempe Elementary School District spokesperson Monica Allread told New Times in an email that Paredes’ mom and federal agents were near the school building Tuesday morning but that her detention “did not take place on school property.” Nonetheless, Sternberg acknowledged how the detention had shaken the school community in her letter to parents.
‘We understand that this situation has caused concern for students, families, staff and community members,” Sternberg wrote. “We are focused on maintaining a safe and supportive learning environment for our students.”
“To ensure safety,” Sternberg wrote, parents and guests would not be able to attend Thursday’s eighth-grade promotion ceremony. The ceremony will instead be recorded and shared with parents, who can pick up their children afterward. “This change may be disappointing for some families,” Sternberg wrote. “However, we feel it is truly in the best interest of our students and staff.”
Parents outside the school were more than disappointed. Dalia Jimenez, a 30-year-old mother of two Cecil Shamley students, said she found out ICE was outside her kids’ school from a text from her daughter. She was “pissed off” because “my kid shouldn’t be the one telling me all this.”
“It’s just really sad that the school is allowing this. This should be a sanctuary and a safe place,” said Jimenez, who attended Cecil Shamley as a student herself. “This community is built on immigrants and we’re allowing families to be pulled out and taken out of state, or wherever they’re going.”
