Undocumented US College Student Deported During Las Vegas Vacation

• A U.S. college student with no criminal record was deported to Mexico, a country he hadn’t seen since age 4, during a recent Las Vegas vacation 
• A sarcastic text to the Strat led to the student’s arrest when it was discovered he was undocumented
• ICE was notified, as per police policy, setting in motion a month-long detention and deportation process
  

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A Las Vegas vacation turned into a nightmare in January, when Gabriel Espinoza was busted, detained, and deported to Mexico — a country he hasn’t seen since being brought to the U.S. illegally at 4 years old.

According to the Nevada Independent, Espinoza, a 22-year-old college student from California, was vacationing with a friend when the Strat claimed that one of them replied to an automated checkout text.

“omfg stop before I bomb this place,” the reply read.

Espinoza and his friend were detained while exiting the hotel by a security guard for making terrorist threats. When police arrived, they arrested Espinoza while releasing his friend, setting into motion a protocol that, according to the news website, has become increasingly common with undocumented immigrants accused of committing crimes in Las Vegas.

Police notified ICE that it had booked a “foreign-born individual.” This has been the department’s policy since it agreed to cooperate with ICE in January 2025. (According to the Las Vegas Sun, Las Vegas police have notified ICE approximately 2,700 times since then.)

Espinoza — who has no criminal history and denies sending the text — was booked and processed by ICE, then held in the Nevada Southern Detention Center for a month. He described to the Independent experiencing an “ambient feeling of despair” throughout his ordeal.

Even after a judge granted him voluntary departure — allowing Espinoza to leave on his own terms — ICE reportedly kept him in custody, eventually removing him to an Arizona facility in a 3 a.m. transfer that left his family in the dark. Days later, he was dropped at the border in Nogales, Sonora to fend for himself.

According to the Independent, Espinoza could not qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) – the program that protected people brought by their parents into the country illegally when they were children – because the program stopped accepting new applicants a year before he would have aged into it.

Espinoza told the Independent that his Vegas trip began as a celebratory “last hurrah” before a group of friends finished community college and he continued pursuing his dream of becoming a teacher in the U.S. He decided to extend the three-day vacation by an extra day, with a stay at the Strat because one of those friends wanted to ride its SkyJump bungee ride.

Espinoza, who now resides in Tijuana with an aunt, says he has given up on his dream.