Bowling Green celebrates Ernesto Manuel-Andres’ return home

Published 10:00 pm Wednesday, June 25, 2025

By David Horowitz

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Ernesto Manuel-Andres, a Bowling Green teenager who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents June 4 despite legal authorization to stay in the U.S., according to his attorneys, gets emotional as he receives hugs from loved ones as around 100 members of the community gathered to welcome him back home outside Teranga Academy on Wednesday evening, June 25, 2025. After 20 days of detainment, Manuel-Andres was released on bond Tuesday, and is entitled to remain undetained as long as he continues attending his hearings, according to Fugees Family, the main nonprofit that’s been supporting his release. GRACE MCDOWELL / BOWLING GREEN DAILY NEWS

DAVID MAMARIL HOROWITZ

david.horowitz@bgdailynews.com

 

As Ernesto Manuel-Andres walked a pathway with scores along either side, cheers of around 100 enveloped the 18-year-old. In the Wednesday evening humidity — one day after his release from being locked up in Monroe, Louisiana — the celebration echoed across the field of Teranga Academy, where Manuel-Andres had attended high school before graduating last month.

Then, as he held a loved one, and he was held back, tears fell. One hundred went silent, and time might as well have stood still. One after another, several others embraced him without letting go, and then, two little girls clasped their arms around his back, holding miniature American flags.

“Thank you for your (being) here … and thank you for who prayed for me to get out of Louisiana, that you support me,” the 18-year-old told the crowd as he wiped his face.

“I’m happy to be at my house again in Kentucky.”

Luma Mufleh, the main organizer who has worked to bring him back, told attendees it was them — community members across the area, the advocates — who helped make it happen.

“… the community of Bowling Green looked at Ernesto, a resident of our community, and said he’s ours,” Manuel-Andres’ former principal, Kristi Costellow, told the crowd.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Manuel-Andres without a warrant June 4. The charge, which alleges that he entered the country unlawfully, doesn’t mention any of his legal paperwork, which proves he’s legally authorized to stay in the U.S., his attorneys have said.

Manuel-Andres’ release follows multiple protests and prayer vigils, advocacy to officials and a fundraiser that passed $30,000. He was released on a bond of $1,500 and has other hearings to come.

“When you see these difficult things happen, you can ask yourself, ‘What if it was my child? What if it was me?’, ” Costellow said. “And all I can say is that I’m thankful to be in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where we live in a community where people will see something that’s wrong, and they will keep at it until it’s made right.”

Dana Beasley-Brown, one of the city commissioners who advocated for his return, spoke through wet eyes as she spoke of her own son, who will turn 18 this year.

“It went straight to my mom heart, just thinking about him as someone’s child,” Beasley-Brown said of the reunion. “… That hug — that meant everything that he had been missing, so alone all that time, to finally feel that simplicity of just being able to touch someone who loves you and who knows your name, and is something that I don’t think you can take for granted, and just grateful that he’s home and back with us.”

The celebration concluded with a call for advocacy for others as well.

Mufleh recalled a time in April 2021, her brother was stopped by four large SUVs in Jordan and taken away in a car while his two girls, 8 and 10, were left behind on the highway. Her parents, in fear of retaliation, had told Mufleh to not speak up, she said.

“In the past few months, we’ve seen that scene play out here — where people are taken out of their homes, out of the streets, when they have every legal right to be here, just like Ernesto,” Mufleh said.

“But the difference is you spoke up for what was right, you said, ‘Not in this town, not in our community, and not on our watch’ — and I’ve never been more inspired by the group here, to move mountains to bring him home.”

Within the past 24 hours, Mufleh said, six others had reached out about family members or loved ones who have gone missing, not knowing what to do.

“This is bigger than just Ernesto,” Mufleh said. “He is symbolic of something going on in our country, and you are symbolic of what should be going on in our country.”

“Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity and the goodness in people and the beauty in people, and for being here to bring him home.”

Manuel-Andres gave her a hug.

Chants of “Ernesto, we love you,” closed out the evening, and supporters congregated among one another.

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