Last week, a fourth grader was detained by Ice officials and separated from his father during a scheduled immigration hearing in Houston, Texas.

KTLA5 reported that Martir Garcia Lara, a student at Torrance elementary in south California, attended the hearing with his father on 29 May.

His teachers alerted the school’s parent-teacher association (PTA), which is lobbying for Lara to be released.

“He’s alone and he’s not able to return home,” said Jasmin King, the president of the PTA.

“We have not received any information on why they were detained. All we know is that Martir is just a fourth grader who’s by himself, without his dad, without a parent, and just in a place that he probably doesn’t know, so we can only imagine what he might be feeling.”