The U.S. Border Patrol in Houlton posted a photograph on Facebook last week showing a detained Lewiston teen with his uncle after they were stopped for speeding in Falmouth last month. The teen has been separated from his family and is being held in a facility for undocumented minors in New York City. He faces possible deportation to El Salvador. U.S Border Patrol photo

LEWISTON – The U.S. Border Patrol took a 17-year-old from Lewiston into custody recently after an agent determined the boy and his uncle, who was driving to work, didn’t have permission to remain in the country.

The Boston Globe, which broke the story Tuesday, said an officer from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection phoned his mother the same day and said, in a recorded comment, that “your son is probably going to be deported to El Salvador.”

The Globe said the unnamed officer, who spoke Spanish, told her, “If you wish, you can turn yourself in, and be deported with him. But he is going to be deported either way.”

It appears, though, the boy is likely to be released to his family soon.

The Globe reported that the mother, who has lived in Lewiston for a month, said her son had been riding to his new job at a construction site earlier that day with his uncle, who was driving.

Kira Gagarin, a Massachusetts immigration lawyer working on the case, said Wednesday it is “very frightening” that the Border Patrol “is detaining minors when we are supposed to be deporting criminals, terrorists, and drug dealers, or something like that.”

The U.S. Border Patrol in Houlton posted on Facebook last week that its resident agent had “responded to assist a Maine State Police Trooper on a traffic stop for speeding near Falmouth.”

The agent “determined that two subjects in the vehicle were in the country illegally,” the Border Patrol post said. “Both were apprehended.”

The agency said it learned later than one of the two “was placed with the Office of Refugee Resettlement.” It is holding him in a facility near New York City created to hold undocumented minors, the Globe reported.

Gagarin said that it “must be a slow month” for the Border Patrol “if detaining minors is something they are proud of.”

While the Globe named the boy, the Sun Journal is withholding his name because he is a minor who has apparently not been charged with any crime.

His unnamed uncle, who had a criminal record and open bench warrants, was slated for deportation to El Salvador, the Border Patrol said.

Gagarin said that although the uncle “seems to have a criminal record,” the boy who was detained doesn’t.

That’s what it makes it scary, she said.

The Border Patrol is “detaining kids, yanking them from their stable homes and communities, and for what? ” Gagarin said.

She said the agency picked up three minors at the time who were all taken into custody despite having families that were already approved to care for them.

Gagarin said the Office of Refugee Resettlement is simply going to process them each again and then release them to their families.

She said she spoke to the Border Patrol, which won’t discuss individual cases with the press, “and they couldn’t even make sense of this to me as it makes zero sense.”

Reuters reported Feb. 23 that the Trump administration “is directing immigration agents to track down hundreds of thousands of migrant children who entered the United States without their parents, expanding the president’s mass deportation effort.”

Citing an internal memo, Reuters said Immigration and Customs Enforcement planned “an unprecedented push to target migrant children who crossed the border illegally as unaccompanied minors.”

The Globe said the boy’s family, including younger siblings, moved to Lewiston from Long Island a month ago after his parents found a cheaper, larger apartment. The boy’s father stayed behind in New York, where he works as a garbage collector.

The Globe said the boy came to the United States as an unaccompanied minor in 2019 at the age of 12. His mother had been in the country for nine years at the time, and his father even longer.

When the child arrived in the U.S., he was held in federal custody for a month, the Globe said, while his parents were successfully vetted to become his sponsor. The boy was supposed to appear in immigration court later, but that never happened, for reasons that remain unclear.

Gagarin said the Lewiston boy and the other minors now being held “have been waiting for a court date for years now, with none being scheduled.”

What will happen next is uncertain, though Gagarin said she believes the boy will be released.

President Donald Trump, however, has made no secret of his desire to deport those who lack permission to remain in the country, whatever their age.

In Lewiston, the boy’s mother told the Globe she hopes her son can stay.

“We contribute to this country, she told the paper, “and we do it happily to bring a plate of food to our children. I just ask God that he change the president’s mind.”