University of Florida student’s deportation caused by a silly mistake

ICE agents deported an international University of Florida student after he mistakenly drove with a suspended license when police pulled him over on the highway.

Felipe Zapata Velasquez, a third-year economics student, was cited for traffic violations while driving near the school’s campus in Gainesville on March 28.

Dramatic police bodycam footage of the arrest, released on Tuesday, captures the moment officers handcuffed the confused 27-year-old before deporting him to his native Colombia.

A Gainesville Police officer can be heard asking Zapata Velasquez for his license and questioning whether he went to school at the northern Florida college. 

‘I’m an international student,’ he told the officer. ‘I just came from Colombia.’ 

The officer ran his information and found that his license had been suspended.  

‘What’s up with your license, man?’ the officer asked. ‘Your license is suspended.’ 

Zapata Velasquez told the officer he was in the process of renewing his license, along with his F-1 student visa.  

At this point, the officers handcuffed him and told him he was under arrest for driving with a suspended license – something he had allegedly been cited for previously.

‘You already got a citation for this before, this is now your second citation; however, now you’re gonna go to the courts for it,’ the officer said. 

Zapata Velasquez is a third-year undergraduate majoring in Food and Resource Economics at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the Florida college. 

His distraught mother, Claudia Velasquez, confirmed that he had returned to Colombia while speaking with a TV station in Latin America. 

‘They pulled him over, told him his license was suspended,’ she told Nuestra Tele Noticias of the interaction with police. 

‘They took him to the station and at the station is where they started to do the process to pay his bond. 

‘Obviously, they knew they were gonna hold him. Once he was done with the whole process, ICE was waiting for him.’

She added that her son had been in the middle of renewing his F-1 student visa. 

‘They knew it was a mistake. It was an error, but that doesn’t make him a criminal,’ she said. 

Zapata Velasquez was reportedly transferred to Jacksonville before being taken to Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade County. 

He was cited for illegal license plate/attached mobile home sticker, driving with a license suspended or revoked with knowledge, and/or having an expired tag. 

The deportation has sparked protests by University of Florida students enraged by the sweeping ICE operations. 

Dimitris Liveris, a freshman at the college who helped organize a protest, told NBC6 students are worried that they could be next on the deportation list. 

‘Right now, we’re seeing waves and waves of fear throughout the student body because people don’t know what’s going to get them placed in an ICE prison,’ he said.

Several other students at US universities have hit the headlines recently for being deported for a variety of reasons. 

Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, a graduate student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, is at the center of a deportation challenge over claims she was a Hamas supporter.

She was seen in footage being detained by plainclothes ICE agents last month.

Columbia University student Yunseo Chung, 21, is also facing deportation over apparent affiliation with pro-Palestine protests. 

The student was arrested on March 5 and she has since sued the Trump administration after having her lawful permanent resident status revoked.    

Meanwhile, a Cornell University student facing deportation after his visa was revoked because of campus activism said he decided to leave the United States voluntarily.

Momodou Taal, a citizen of the United Kingdom and Gambia, had asked a federal court to halt his detention after the Trump administration had forced him to surrender.

The government says it revoked Taal´s student visa because of his alleged involvement in ‘disruptive protests.’

A March Madness student athlete could also be in the firing line due to a change in the status of his home country under new Trump administration rules.  

A Duke University spokesman has said the school is ‘looking into’ a State Department ruling that could see South Sudanese Blue Devils star Khaman Maluach deported.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on X that the US would be ‘taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and to restrict any further issuance to prevent entry into the United States, effective immediately.’

Rubio stated the reason for this was because of ‘the failure of South Sudan’s transitional government to accept the return of its repatriated citizens in a timely manner.’