Gabriel Espinoza, a 22-year-old community college student from California, has been living in the U.S. since he was 4 years old.

Then, after a four-day trip with friends in Las Vegas this January, Espinoza was deported following a confrontation with security guards at the Strat Hotel. An arrest report from the incident says Espinoza and his friends responded to an automated text from the hotel reminding them to check-out with “omfg stop before I bomb this place” — a text Espinoza denies sending. 

He was scheduled to leave a day earlier, but Espinoza says he extended his stay in Vegas to relax, deciding to book a night at the Strat because it seemed “interesting” and because his friend was hoping to check out a bungee jump ride. Espinoza described the trip as a last “hurrah” before wrapping up his college years.

But as he was set to check out of the hotel, a security guard confronted Espinoza and his friend, claiming they had threatened to attack the hotel. Espinoza’s friend was quickly released, while Espinoza was booked into police custody — provoking his monthlong U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in Nevada and Arizona and eventual deportation to his birth country of Mexico. 

“Me and my friend have absolutely no idea what’s happening at all,” Espinoza told The Nevada Independent in an interview from Tijuana, Mexico, where he is living now with his aunt. “We’re more than scared, in disbelief at what is actually happening, because we have no clue.”

Although the charges were dropped that same day and his friend was released, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police handed Espinoza to ICE custody. 

His deportation shows how a single remark can have life-altering consequences in today’s immigration climate, especially considering Las Vegas Metro Police’s ongoing collaboration with ICE. In June, the department reentered an ICE partnership to carry out immigration enforcement duties in its jails, and since last January, the department has held a policy to notify ICE when it books someone believed to be a “foreign-born individual.” 

His case highlights how the police partnerships with ICE can result in the deportations of people with no criminal histories and who already have deep roots in the United States. Espinoza speaks fluent English and has not set foot in Mexico since he was a toddler. Espinoza says he didn’t find out he was undocumented until he was about 10 years old.

It also comes as local employers have expressed concerns that President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is slowing tourism, with visitation from Canada and Mexico notably down in 2025.

Metro did not immediately return a request for comment on whether it is policy to hand people to ICE even if charges are dropped. 

Espinoza recalls a police officer mocking him about his impending move to immigration custody shortly before he was handed off.

“He called me out of the holding room just to tell me that. He was just taunting me and stuff,” Espinoza told The Indy.

The Las Vegas Sun found that from February to September 2025, Metro has sent nearly 2,700 notices to ICE that it had booked someone believed to be a “foreign-born individual.” The department sends another notice to ICE when that person is released.

“The feeling of despair”

Despite rising immigration tensions, Espinoza said he had recently begun to “feel normal.” He was set to transfer to a four-year college to study mathematics and felt he had finally found a group of friends who didn’t judge him for his legal status. 

After being released into ICE custody, he was taken to an ICE processing center in Las Vegas and then to the Nevada Southern Detention Center, where he stayed for about a month. 

Throughout his time in detention, Espinoza said he talked to other detainees who had stayed in facilities in Texas and Arizona. All widely agreed that the Nevada Southern Detention Center “was the best kept one.”

“I think the biggest struggle was the feeling of despair. That was just ambient,” Espinoza said.

“But besides that, they didn’t treat us terribly.”

Rather than face deportation, Espinoza petitioned for voluntary departure. Although a judge eventually granted him voluntary leave (despite pushback from the Department of Homeland Security), he was never released from ICE detention. ICE agents repeatedly refused to provide Gabriel or his loved ones information about how to coordinate his transportation — citing safety concerns — even when Gabriel’s loved ones said they were willing to pay for his departure. 

ICE did not immediately return a request about whether they denied Espinoza’s voluntary departure. 

“I was expecting to be let go at any point in time,” he said. Espinoza noted that many other detainees had been whisked away in the middle of the night with no heads up — something he feared.

The same thing eventually happened to him. At 3am in the morning, he was transferred to a facility in Arizona where he was taken days later to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. He said he was not processed into the facility, never even taken out of his street clothes, and that he had no access to phones while staying at the Arizona facility. He said there were not enough beds in the facility for everyone to sleep. 

The ICE locator — an online tool to help locate people in detention — did not update his whereabouts. 

For a long time, Espinoza said his legal status felt like a weight. He was fearful about his ability to get a job or qualify for financial aid. Despite his efforts, Espinoza missed the deadline to qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — a program that protects children who entered the country illegally from deportation — because the program stopped accepting new enrollees about a year before he would have aged into it. 

He had aspirations to become a teacher, describing learning as an escape.

“I had been sort of living in a state of survival for most of my young life,” Espinoza said. “My family told me that … I had to be a little bit smarter, I had to be a little bit more resilient. I had to be stronger than everybody else.” 

Espinoza described his welcome into Mexico as “very kind and very helpful.” He was renaturalized as a Mexican citizen and the government provided him with cash to get back on his feet as well as temporary shelter. For now, Espinoza is looking into schooling options in Mexico and trying to refamiliarize himself with the country. 

“I’ve been feeling a lot more comfortable in this place, it isn’t bad or scary or anything,” Espinoza said. “It’s just new to me.”