This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
Yasser Jose Lopez Soza has spent his weeks in the West Tennessee Detention Center working seven-hour kitchen shifts to stay busy.
The 18-year-old Memphis high school student has been held in ICE detention since his arrest on Feb. 20 on the way to a school soccer game. He said he misses his mom and friends and wishes he were back in his classes at Memphis Business Academy.
“I feel like I’m dying of loneliness, nostalgia and sadness,” Lopez Soza wrote in Spanish in an April 9 letter to Chalkbeat. “School was my happy place where I spent the majority of my time. I miss my teachers and my friends.”
Thursday, a federal judge ordered Lopez Soza’s immediate release from the detention center. According to the court decision, detaining the high school junior without bond violated his rights to due process.