The loved ones of a beloved youth mentor who worked with at-risk youth in Parramore are seeking answers after they said he was picked up by immigration authorities last week on his way home from a routine check-in.

Didy Quetant, an undocumented 30-year-old whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement says is a Haitian national, was sent to Krome Detention Facility in Miami, where he awaits a return to Central Florida for an immigration hearing scheduled for early October. The staffer at New Image Youth Center was taken into custody by Florida Highway Patrol and ICE Fugitive Operations at a traffic stop on Aug. 21, following an appointment that morning at the ICE field office in Orlando.

His detention surprised Shanta Barton-Stubbs, founder and director of NIYC, who has known Quetant since he first began participating in the center’s after-school programming at the age of 14. Though he came in as a troubled teen, he turned his life around in the ensuing years, going from student to staffer when he became among the first crop of ‘credible messengers’ — mentors for at-risk youth — to be certified through Orange County’s then-burgeoning program in 2022.

His arrest leaves behind a girlfriend and three children as his case proceeds through the immigration courts. His hearing is scheduled to take place Oct. 3 in Orlando.

“Losing Didy would be like losing a community hero, and that’s why we’re fighting so hard for him,” Barton-Stubbs said. His supporters, she added, have been gathering letters of support ahead of Quetant’s hearing. As of Thursday, a GoFundMe page Barton-Stubbs created raised $2,250 for his legal defense, short of its $3,500 goal.

An ICE spokesperson confirmed the arrest Friday and pointed to, as reasons for Quetant’s detention, his “extensive arrest history” and a removal order by an immigration judge in December 2001, when he was 7. Barton-Stubbs said Quetant applied for Temporary Protected Status as a Haitian national, though he insists he wasn’t born there.

The special status, which is set to expire in February, allows migrants from countries considered unsafe to live and work legally in the U.S. Quetant failed to obtain this status, however, due to his arrest record.

In 2007, when he was 13, Quetant received a suspended sentence for a felony, and as an adult, he was sentenced to probation after pleading no contest to felony battery in 2014, according to court documents and records maintained by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. A misdemeanor case from 2021, the most recent one the Sentinel could verify, was dropped by prosecutors.

Quetant has no other convictions, and the Sentinel could not locate other criminal cases naming him as a defendant in state or federal court filings. But his past is not a secret to those who love him and work with him — if anything, his story and turnaround became an example for the children at NIYC and led him to seek certification as a credible messenger.

In an interview, Ruben Saldaña, a former gang leader turned MMA coach who leads Orange County Credible Messengers and presented Quetant’s certification, called his arrest “a big loss” to the community.

“His name is associated with being a protector and a big brother for the kids, and we’re not talking part-time,” Saldaña said. “He’s always on deck with those kids, and not just during programming hours telling the kids to do good.”

Standing over six-feet tall with a stocky build, he was described as a “gentle teddy bear” and a mentor who lived in Parramore. At NIYC, he created a program called “Hood Therapy,” which gathers people in the community to provide a safe space and a meal in an unstructured setting.

It took place on Fridays and was successful since its inception, with a packed house on its first day as word spread in the neighborhood. Though many were not signed up to receive NIYC’s services, Barton-Stubbs said “they respected the fact that we had rules there.”

“It was also open for them to be able to be themselves,” she added. “Because Didy was there, he kept things in order.”

For years, NIYC staff and others have sought to rectify Quetant’s immigration status, though some of his personal records have made aspects of his situation challenging, board member Katie Philp said. Though his parents are from Haiti, Quetant was born in St. Martin, a Caribbean island shared by France and the Netherlands.

The paperwork for that, however, has been unclear. Even in public records, there is no mention of his birthplace being anywhere other than the U.S. or its territories. In his criminal history maintained by FDLE, he was at one point listed as being born in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“In terms of citizenship, I’m not entirely sure where he fell,” said Philp, who told the Sentinel she personally worked alongside Quetant to resolve his immigration case. “There’s a lot of fuzziness that unfortunately isn’t easy to resolve just because of the lack of documentation, which is entirely of no fault of Didy’s, who came here as a small child.”

Florida has been on the forefront of state immigration enforcement, in line with President Donald Trump’s agenda of pursuing mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Though the administration initially claimed to be targeting immigrants accused of crimes — with some high-profile arrests by state authorities since — a large swath of detainees have not been accused of serious offenses.

An analysis by the Sentinel of 375 detainees arrested in three Central Florida counties between January and April found 55% of them were, like Quetant, detained after being stopped for a traffic violation. Of those initially arrested for crimes, more than half were for nonviolent offenses.

The day after his arrest, Barton-Stubbs and other staffers gathered the children students at NIYC to break the news, leaving them in shock. She said she has spoken with Quetant in the week since his arrest, and on Monday, he called in to update them of his predicament.

“We watch the news and you hear the stories, but then for it to happen in your own backyard …” Barton-Stubbs said. “This has been so hard to deal with, but this is how we come together as a community.”

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