DEPORTED FOR DRIVING: THE ERASURE OF FELIPE ZAPATA VELÁSQUEZ
The United States educated him. Welcomed him. Gave him a student ID and a tuition bill. Then it kicked him out like a used napkin over a technicality.
Felipe Zapata Velásquez — third-year economics student at the University of Florida, kind-hearted, brilliant, and determined — got pulled over on March 28th for expired tags and a suspended license.
Gainesville police shrugged, ICE sharpened its claws, and within 48 hours he was in shackles. No trial. No hearing. No lawyer present. Just a pipeline from campus to Krome Detention Center, Florida’s own bureaucratic oubliette.
The Trump administration didn’t deport a criminal.
It deported a student.
A dreamer.
A life in progress.
They told Felipe he could “wait it out” in detention, for months or years — or take a one-way flight to Bogotá and call it “voluntary.” That’s not immigration enforcement.
That’s state-sponsored extortion in a navy blue jacket.
Now he’s in Colombia, shattered. His mother says he barely speaks. His future — the one he was building in Gainesville — was erased by a traffic stop and a system that no longer pretends to care.
UF students protested. Professors pleaded. But ICE doesn’t do nuance. It does quotas. And fear. And quiet erasures like this.
This wasn’t just a deportation.
It was a warning.
To every international student. Every undocumented youth. Every person with the wrong accent or the wrong paperwork or the wrong goddamn luck. It says: “You don’t belong. And we can take everything.”
And if expired tags are enough to end your American life —
what isn’t?
Felipe Zapata Velásquez wasn’t a criminal. He wasn’t a threat.
He was a student — until a broken taillight, a suspended license, and a shrug from a cop cost him everything.
At Closer to the Edge, we don’t just tell you the story.
We rip the mask off the system that made it happen.
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He should apply to a University in Canada and get his life back on track. We are not afraid of intelligence here.
I have a friend that was born in the Netherlands 67 years ago. Her parents brought her to the U.S. 62 years ago. She has lived there ever since. She served in the Navy, she raised a family there, but she did not get her citizenship papers. She is Filipino background, so she is brown. She has decided to return to the Netherlands, because she is afraid to leave her house in case she is stopped by ICE or the police.