TRENTON, N.J. — He was born on the Fourth of July, an irony he would only appreciate later, during the dark period of his life, when liberty and freedom became far more than mere words in his high school history book.

Daniel Guadron has been fighting the odds all his young life, mostly as a happy warrior, winning admirers and supporters at every turn.

It's not just that he excelled in school: The straight-A student mastered English within months of emigrating from Guatemala at 13, then mastered French. He's aced every math test he has ever taken.

Or that he is blessed with a sunny nature and ever-flashing smile.

Or that he shines on the soccer field and on the wrestling mat.

The handsome, crewcut young man has always possessed something more, a wisdom that radiates from his deep brown eyes, a thirst for knowledge and self-improvement, a clarity of vision about the nature of the world and what he can achieve in it.

Everyone could see it — his teachers at Trenton Central High, his coaches, the running buddies who trained with him for his first 10K race, co-workers in the restaurant where he works at weekends, even a lawyer he befriended in the corporate building he cleans. "Mr. Professor," the lawyer dubbed the teen who cheerfully swept floors even as he dreamed of becoming an engineer.

Daniel's guidance counselor called him "everyone's shining star."

And then, one chilly day in April 2008, the 18-year-old star disappeared.

———

They thundered into the inner-city row house at dawn, shouting and banging doors, their guns as prominent as the letters emblazoned on their windbreakers: ICE.

Daniel was in bed, but he knew who the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had come for — his mother, Luisa, who had left for work a short time earlier. He refused to tell them where she was.

And so, agents handcuffed and shackled him and put him in a van. They drove 52 miles to Elizabeth, to a windowless warehouse on a bleak industrial strip near Newark International Airport. There, Daniel was handed a drab blue prison uniform and locked up with 300 other immigrants.

"Why am I being treated like a criminal," he thought, "when I have done nothing wrong?"

It didn't take long for him to learn about the otherworldly universe of U.S. detention centers, where every year about 350,000 asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are held indefinitely while the government decides their fate.

Daniel knew that immigrants can be deported if they don't have proper papers. Plenty of illegals live in Trenton and he had heard horror stories about families swept up in ICE raids.