🚔 South Walton High senior Rolando Velasquez Andres was arrested in a statewide immigration enforcement sweep.
✊ Students, teachers, and community members organized to advocate for his release and postponed a planned protest.
🏫 Velasquez, a science award winner and wrestler, is returning home after a week in ICE detention.
Rolando Velasquez Andres was one of about 200 people arrested amidst Florida Highway Patrol Operations to detain and help deport undocumented immigrants in the Florida Panhandle last week.
While many arrestees were detained by the Florida Highway Patrol, Velasquez Andres was taken into custody by the Walton County Sheriff’s Office. According to an arrest affidavit filed by the Walton County Sheriff’s Office, Velasquez Andres was arrested for driving without a license or insurance after an accident involving a white truck and a guard rail on Highway 331.
Like many of the other people arrested, he was driving without a license and taken to a local jail – in his case, the Walton County Jail in Defuniak Springs.
But unlike many of the other men and women arrested in similar circumstances, he had a network of aggressive advocates for his release.
Velasquez has no criminal record and turned 18 in June, when he was arrested by Walton County Sheriff’s Deputies, according to Walton County Jail Records. He was held in the Walton County Jail for around 36 hours before being moved to Miami.
Now, those same advocates say he is coming home.
The group, led by students as well as current or former teachers of Rolando’s, launched a campaign to return Velasquez. The group found out Monday that the senior at the prestigious Magnet Innovation Center in South Walton County would return to Northwest Florida to be with his family after a weeklong stay in an ICE detention center near Miami.
The news was welcome, and students who’ve written letters to their congressmembers on Velasquez Andres’ behalf say they cancelled a planned protest at The Coffee Shop in the Publix strip mall but decided not to go forward with it after hearing from a member of Velasquez Andres’ family, who lives in Walton County. “We’ve been advised to postpone the rally on Monday at 3:30 PM because we’ve been advised that it could potentially jeopardize Rolando’s chances of getting home free, and we do not want to run the risk of anything happening to him – especially after everything that has already happened. “
Instead of a protest, a group of Rolando’s teachers and friends had a media availability session at the Coffee Shop in South Walton on Monday.
They introduced us to Rolando, an award winner in a recent science competition, a wrestler with the South Walton Seahawks team, and an active member of the Biomed program at Magnet Innovation Center and the HOSA Future Health Professionals Organization.
Other media asked about Rolando. What was he like? We asked what his favorite activities and hobbies were. It was like asking the victim’s relatives to describe the victim of a car crash, murder, or other malfeasance. It was like he’d died and we’d been invited to his wake – but without a framed photo of him surrounded by flowers.
Students and teachers gathered in the back of The Coffee Shop’s cavernous sitting area. Open mics stand in front of an image of the Hindu Chakras that are lighted by stage lamps.
Woody Guthrie’s Deportee plays in the background as the adults show up to the event.
“My father’s own father, he waded that river
They took all the money he made in his life
It’s six hundred miles to the Mexico border
And they chased them like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves”
Sean Libby is the only adult currently employed as a teacher who showed up at the media availability. He mentioned that other teachers were interested in joining the availability today. Still, they didn’t do it because they were worried about their jobs – a concern that also crossed Libby’s mind.
“I didn’t really think about it at first. I was like, ‘we need to get out there and get the story [about Velasquez Andres] out there, “he said, “But then after [he contacted the media] I was like ‘oh, crap, I may be looking for a job.”
He noted that several other students who said they would speak on Rolando’s behalf decided at the last minute not to. One student, Libby, said, choked back emotion while he told him he couldn’t make it. Libby said he understood – parents don’t want their kids in trouble over something like this.
He says that Velasquez Andres’ arrest became a topic in his government and history classes, where he teaches. The student’s friends began to ask questions about the legality of the arrest, what happens next, and what they could do to stop a potential deportation from taking place.
His government class quickly moved from the abstract to the in-your-face. He told them to write their congressmen, Neal Dunn and Jimmy Patronis, about the situation.
Libby said the students and some teachers initially decided to hold a protest at the school against Velazquez Andres’ detention. Still, as more people thought about the environment in Walton County, more people got skittish about supporting the cause.
But Libby decided to move forward anyway.
“This isn’t the line we were sold on,” he said about the Trump Administration’s emphasis on deporting criminals, “‘we’re just going to get the out the guys who are drug dealers and rapists and murderers and all that. That’s the line we were sold. It’s kind of been crossed a little bit.”
Erin Blunt, a former teacher at the Magnet Innovation Center, has a daughter actively involved in the effort to return Velasquez Andres to Walton County and his mother.
“They messed up by picking up Rolando,” Blunt said, “it’s not in their favor to mess up like this because we’re all riled up now.”
This odyssey for Rolando activated the political instinct in the students at the school. Many of them turned 18 along with Velazquez Andres this year.
“When Rolando gets home, that’s kind of the beginning of this other part of this fight. He’s going to be fighting to get his life back, because we have no idea what’s going on in his head.”
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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