‘They kidnapped a hard-working kid off our streets’: the gardener seized by ICE – and the New York town fighting back

Gerson Turcios was 17 when he fled violence in Honduras to build a new life in the US. Six years later, he was mowing lawns in his home town of Rhinebeck when immigration officers took him. Within hours, friends, neighbours and local celebrities sprang into action. Could they stop his deportation?

Gerson Turcios didn't recognise the menstanding next to a couple of dark SUVs outside his house one July afternoon last year. He figured they were lost and approached to see if he could help. A slim 23-year-old with short dark hair and big brown eyes, Turcios had just finished work mowing lawns in the pretty town of Rhinebeck, in New York's Hudson Valley. The men asked if he knew someone called Jimmy - he did, but Jimmy hadn't lived in the small, white weatherboard house with Turcios, his brother and his brother's girlfriend for a while.

The men noted Turcios's accent and asked where he was from. Turcios didn't answer, so one took out his phone and snapped a photograph. The next thing Turcios knew, he was in handcuffs in the back of one of the SUVs and on his way to an ICE processing centre in Newburgh, New York, then on to a detention centre.