Human Impact Project

Alicia arrived for a routine ICE check-in in Louisiana in April 2025 and was detained without warning at Basile detention center. She soon discovered she was pregnant. In detention, she received inadequate food and in May began experiencing severe abdominal pain, cramping, and bleeding. At an emergency room, medical staff performed an invasive uterine test without her consent and informed her she had miscarried. ICE returned her to Basile that same night, where she remained detained for two more months despite continued heavy bleeding, swelling, fever, and severe uterine pain. Repeated sick call requests went unanswered. ICE deported her in July 2025, separating her from her children, and she later required hospital care for a severe infection acquired in custody.

Wendy Brito, an asylum-seeker from El Salvador and mother of three living in the New Orleans area, was detained after attending a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She has been in the U.S. for 15 years and volunteers at a local elementary school. Her partner Kremly Marrero said officials told the family she was taken because of "new regulations under the new administration." Brito is now held in Basile, Louisiana, nearly 200 miles away from her home and children, and ICE has declined to comment on the specifics of her case.

In New Orleans, ICE called a trans-Latina immigrant advocate and community organizer into the field office after telling her they wanted to offer her less restrictive monitoring in recognition of her community leadership. She was detained when she arrived at her check-in and held at a Louisiana ICE jail, where she says she was denied medical care, placed in solitary confinement, and subjected to verbal and transphobic harassment. She had received the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center annual human rights award in 2024 and was in the process of obtaining a visa for trafficking survivors. She was later deported to Mexico, a country she had never lived in before, and is now working to rebuild her life there while recovering from infections she says went untreated during detention.

A Venezuelan mother, identified only as 'Flora' to protect her safety, was arrested during a routine ICE check-in and remains detained, now held at a facility in Monroe, Louisiana, despite pending asylum and trafficking visa applications. She was allegedly trafficked to the US in 2023 and subjected to sexual abuse, forced labor, and physical violence, and her lawyers say she recently reported herself as a trafficking victim to federal authorities before her detention. Her two children, ages 18 months and four years, have been separated from her and remain in the care of volunteers at the Maryland church where the family had previously sought refuge, while her alleged trafficker remains free. Her legal team has filed a habeas corpus petition arguing her detention violates the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, noting that at least 41 other trafficking survivors have filed similar petitions since early 2025.