Human Impact Project

Simranpal Singh, an Indian national who entered the United States through Arizona in June 2022 and was later released by immigration authorities, was arrested by an ICE officer during a commercial vehicle inspection at a weigh station in Newberry, Pennsylvania. At the time of his arrest, Singh had an outstanding warrant for wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy out of the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and he held a commercial driver's license issued by New York State. He is being held in ICE custody pending transfer to the U.S. Marshals Service for the federal criminal case, after which ICE says it intends to resume custody of him for removal proceedings.

Kira Inthisane, who is currently deployed overseas, started a fundraiser after learning her mother had been taken into ICE custody. Kira said she has spent her own resources on legal fees to try to keep her mother from being deported and is seeking donations to continue funding the legal fight.

A Colombian woman who entered the United States on a B-1/B-2 visa in December 2020 was detained by federal law enforcement on September 4, 2026, while attempting to board a flight at the San Juan airport. She has a pending derivative asylum application tied to a petition filed by her father with USCIS. After her detention, ICE officers at the Guaynabo office reportedly told her that if she did not accept voluntary departure, a Notice to Appear would be filed; she declined and was placed in civil immigration custody at the San Juan Staging Facility in Guaynabo. She requested a bond hearing on September 7, 2026, but before it was resolved, ICE informed her she would be transferred to a detention facility in Florida. She filed a habeas corpus petition and a motion for a temporary restraining order, arguing her detention violated her Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights and seeking to block her transfer and secure her release. The district court granted in part her TRO request, ordering that she not be transferred out of Puerto Rico and that she be given a bond hearing before an immigration judge by September 23, 2026, while denying her request for immediate release and holding the underlying habeas petition in abeyance.

Oscar Sanchez-Corona, a 36-year-old construction worker who was brought to the U.S. as an infant and grew up attending Shawnee Mission schools, was detained by ICE agents on August 18 while pouring concrete at a job site in Lawrence, Kansas, shackled in front of coworkers. Over 18 days he was transferred through Leavenworth's Midwest Regional Reception Center, Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, and a facility in El Paso, Texas, describing leaking ceilings, understaffed units, inadequate food, denial of contact lens solution, and witnessing other detainees struggle to get insulin; he said he lost eight pounds. He was ultimately deported on foot into Juarez, Mexico, separating him from the two elementary school-aged children he shares custody of in Johnson County. DHS cited reinstatement of a prior removal order tied to a teenage misdemeanor property-damage charge, a 2013 deportation after failing to comply with a voluntary departure order, illegal re-entry, and convictions for drug paraphernalia possession, criminal property damage, and driving without a license. A family friend, Skylar Roush, described him as 'a regular American guy' who lived a peaceful life as a worker and father, and his daughter drew a picture asking ICE not to take him away.

Federal ICE agents arrived around 6 a.m. Thursday, September 3, 2025, near Stoneybrook Court and Schaffer Drive in Frederick, Maryland's Taskers Chance neighborhood, searching for a man who had fled a vehicle stop. Agents occupied the area for nearly 40 hours, prompting residents to stay inside and skip work, while observers from the Western Maryland Immigrant Rights Collective monitored the scene. On Friday night, when agents ordered the block cleared, a couple dozen residents and observers linked arms and sat down to block a doorway, chanting 'We shall not be moved.' ICE vehicles drove onto a sidewalk, nearly striking City Council Vice President Katie Nash, and agents used batons, grabbed and pushed people, and dragged protesters off a porch, injuring several, some requiring hospitalization. No arrests were made, and it did not appear anyone inside the targeted home was taken into custody. Frederick police who responded did not assist the federal agents. City Council President César Díaz and Vice President Katie Nash said observers were not violent, with Nash stating, 'It's nuts. Now people are just not leaving their houses.' Frederick Mayor Michael O'Connor, Díaz, and the county executive publicly objected to the tactics, and a local representative called for a full investigation into the agents' use of force.

At least three people were detained Friday after immigration officials conducted a raid at a roofing job site in Morristown, according to a statement by the company. Limited details were provided about the individuals involved.

Zoilo Viloria, a 66-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who worked in building maintenance in Tacoma, Washington, was detained by ICE agents in a McDonald's parking lot while stopping for coffee on his way to work. His daughter, Stephany Viloria, said agents had been scanning license plates to check drivers' immigration status and took her father away in handcuffs after he nervously handed over his documents. She described him as a hardworking man with no criminal record, not even a traffic infraction, who entered the U.S. legally in 2018 on a tourist visa and later filed for asylum after receiving threats in Colombia tied to his work in the transportation business. He held a valid work permit and driver's license and paid taxes while his asylum case was pending. Days after his arrest, he was transferred, shackled at the hands and feet, to a detention facility in El Paso, Texas, where he has struggled with cold conditions and uncertainty about his care. His daughter posted a video denouncing the arrest, drawing attention to the case.

Since the US ended Temporary Protected Status for Haitians in late July 2026, more than 450 people have been deported to Haiti, with flights to Cap-Haïtien increasing from about once a month to once a week because the Port-au-Prince airport remains unsafe. Human Rights Watch interviewed 44 deportees after the August 20 and 27 flights and found Haitian authorities lack the funding, staff, and policies to safely receive and assist returnees amid a surge in criminal violence and hunger. Many deportees had lived in the US for years, were separated from US citizen family members, or had pending asylum claims. The US Senate is considering House-approved legislation to reinstate TPS for Haitians as litigation over the termination continues.

Fidel Cordero Garcia, a father and pastor in Woodburn, Oregon, was detained by federal immigration agents the same week as another local man, Juan Miguel Aldape. Cordero Garcia's son had joined the U.S. Marines with the goal of eventually helping his father obtain a green card, and was just one week away from turning 21 — the age at which he would have been eligible to petition for his father's residency. Family members say the timing meant Cordero Garcia was detained just before that path to legal status could open.

Renan Hédouville, a lawyer, human-rights advocate and former head of Haiti's Office of Citizen Protection (ombudsman), was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, on August 25 while attempting to update his immigration status, after Haitian authorities issued warrants accusing him of embezzling nearly $130,000 in public funds. An investigation by Haiti's Anti-Corruption Unit alleges he billed for ten fictitious business trips and funneled payments to his daughter and chief of staff, Régine Hédouville, and his son-in-law, Tex Willer Célafoi Louis, among other irregularities; Hédouville had sued the anti-corruption unit and declined to cooperate with investigators. He requested voluntary deportation and was among 79 Haitians sent back on a flight that departed Alexandria, Louisiana, on September 3, one of three such flights since the Trump administration ended temporary protected status for more than 300,000 Haitians.

A joint operation by the Lorain County Sheriff's Office, Homeland Security Investigations, and ICE swept through farmland and roadways near Oberlin, Ohio, arresting two men on criminal human trafficking charges and detaining roughly 50 other people on civil immigration violations. The yearlong investigation targeted a suspected smuggling network accused of recruiting workers under false pretenses and transporting them to agricultural businesses using shell transportation and contracting companies. Law enforcement conducted traffic stops of at least six vans and used a drone to track movement during the operation; three U.S. citizens were left behind in a Walmart parking lot after others nearby were detained. Oberlin city officials said they had no advance knowledge of the operation, which conflicts with the city's longstanding sanctuary policy limiting local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Adnero Pinto Sebastiao, an Angolan national with a pending asylum application, was arrested by ICE agents as he returned from lunch to his job at a bank in the Lewiston area. He had entered the U.S. legally on a tourist visa in March 2024 before applying for asylum, and his immigration case remains pending. His attorneys filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus arguing the detention was an unlawful warrantless arrest lacking individualized assessment. A federal judge issued an indefinite injunction barring ICE from removing him from the U.S. or transferring him out of the District of Maine, and ordered the government to justify the detention. A DHS spokesperson said Sebastiao overstayed his visa and that a pending asylum application does not confer legal status.

Leonardo Sánchez, a 49-year-old Cuban national and lawful permanent resident who arrived in the U.S. in 2010 under the Cuban Adjustment Act and worked as a welder, was deported to Liberia and then Equatorial Guinea after ICE detained him at a gas station. Sánchez suffers from a severe abdominal hernia caused by a stabbing that once left him in a coma for 40 days, and had reconstructive surgery scheduled at Jackson Memorial Hospital before his removal. He said agents refused to remove his shackles or let him use the bathroom during the 14-hour flight, and when he refused to disembark in Liberia out of fear of being abandoned, agents allegedly threw him down the aircraft steps and knelt on his exposed hernia. In Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, doctors refused to treat him without documents, leaving him only paracetamol for pain, and he is now held with five other deportees at a former hotel under armed guard, unable to contact family. His mother and sister in Florida say a lawyer they hired to help him was a scam, and Equatorial Guinea has no asylum framework, leaving him facing indefinite detention or return to Cuba. DHS said Sánchez was ordered removed following a cocaine possession conviction and denied mistreating him.

A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that an Ecuadorean national taken into custody by ICE agents in Keene, New Hampshire, earlier this month is being unlawfully detained because he was denied a bond hearing. The ruling found that immigration authorities violated the man's rights by holding him without the opportunity to seek release on bond.

Hasan Besharat, an 81-year-old Iranian immigrant who came to the U.S. legally on a student visa in 1974 and earned an engineering degree in Nashville, was detained by ICE during a routine check-in in late February despite decades of compliance with an order of supervision issued in 2004. He was held at the CoreCivic-run West Tennessee Detention Center in Mason, where his attorney said his health declined; he is 81, weighs barely 100 pounds, and has high blood pressure. His legal team filed multiple federal court petitions, including two writs of habeas corpus, while Tennessee State Sen. Raumesh Akbari and community members advocated for his release. Besharat, who has a U.S. citizen brother and two U.S. citizen sons, was scheduled for release after seven months in detention, with family members reportedly describing themselves as 'thrilled and ecstatic.'

Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez, a 28-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who fled domestic violence, attended a routine ICE check-in in the San Francisco Bay Area with her two sons, including six-year-old Joseph Andrey Londono Rodriguez, a Deaf student at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. Rodriguez Gutierrez had lived in Hayward for about four years working as a cleaner and child care worker with no criminal record. Instead of a routine visit, agents fingerprinted the family, pressured her to sign an unexplained document, and detained all three despite an existing order of supervision that should have prevented deportation. Her attorney said she repeatedly pleaded with agents to let a relative bring Joseph's hearing aids and cochlear implants, but the devices were never provided, and the family was deported to Colombia within days without legal representation. The attorney said ICE misled his team about the family's whereabouts and obstructed access to counsel. California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, members of Congress, and immigration attorneys have called for an investigation and the family's return so Joseph can resume school and ASL services. Joseph's case is one of more than 650 children detained by ICE in California during Trump's second term, 61% of whom were ultimately deported.

ICE agents surrounded and entered a factory in McCook, Illinois without a warrant, detaining two people. Video from the scene shows an agent tackling a man to the ground inside a restroom and drawing a gun. When workers inside the factory asked agents to produce a warrant, an agent reportedly yelled at them to back off before pushing people aside and removing one of the men.

Jose Diaz, a father of three and the primary provider for his family, was detained by ICE on September 3, 2026. At a court hearing on September 28, his family learned he needs $30,000 for release, in addition to legal fees. His son Luis Diaz describes him as a devoted family man and man of faith who has always supported his children's education and goals, and the family is now struggling financially and emotionally since his detention.

A driver was arrested by ICE agents in North Brunswick, New Jersey after fleeing a traffic stop, running a red light, and crashing into another vehicle on Route 130. The second vehicle, reportedly carrying the wife of East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen, sustained heavy front-end damage, and both of its occupants were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. ICE agents pursued and detained the driver following a foot chase, according to police, who said local officers only responded after the crash occurred and were not involved in the federal operation.

Luis Ivan Campos was detained by ICE while driving to work and subsequently deported on September 3rd, according to his son Christian Campos. He was not pulled over for a traffic violation or detained by local law enforcement before being taken into ICE custody. Campos was the primary caregiver for two of his children with disabilities: a 17-year-old with severe Hemophilia Type A who uses a wheelchair and was recently hospitalized, and a 4-year-old with Down syndrome who also has severe Hemophilia Type A. His family, including his wife Karina, started a fundraiser to help cover expenses and support the children following his deportation.