Human Impact Project

ICE arrested and detained a Russian mother and daughter on December 18, 2025, for removal proceedings after they stopped reporting for immigration check-ins in November 2024. The petitioners had initially arrived at a U.S. port of entry in December 2021 and were released under the Alternative to Detention program. The federal court granted their habeas petition and ordered their release, finding their detention violated immigration law and due process.

Carlos, a Venezuelan man with temporary protected status, was detained by ICE at a New Mexico immigration office in December 2025 after being called for what he believed was a reunification meeting with his 14-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter. Federal officials had previously vetted Carlos and told him his custody case was complete. When he arrived at the ICE office, officers attempted to force him to sign documents he did not understand. After refusing to sign, officers stripped his clothes, seized his belongings, and chained him by the neck, waist, and legs. Carlos said he felt "tricked" and that ICE "used my children to grab me." His two children had been in a federal shelter in Texas for nearly a year after crossing the border to reunite with him. According to reporting, the Trump administration's Office of Refugee Resettlement has begun coordinating with ICE to arrest parents and caregivers seeking custody of unaccompanied migrant children, reversing Obama-era restrictions on data sharing between the resettlement office and immigration enforcement.

A man held in federal immigration custody has been detained since November 29, 2025, a period of six months. He is detained at the Otero County Processing Center and is assumed to be subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b). He filed a Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus on May 7, 2026, challenging the legality of his prolonged detention. The federal respondents filed a response on May 26, 2026. The court determined that his indefinite, prolonged detention may violate his substantive due process rights under the Fifth Amendment, citing precedent from Mardanpour v. Warden. The court ordered him to file a supplemental reply by June 3, 2026, addressing whether he is entitled to habeas relief based on the six-month detention threshold established in Zadvydas v. Davis.

A federal judge ordered the immediate release of Paulo Cesar Gamez Lira, a 27-year-old DACA recipient and father of four U.S. citizen children who was detained by ICE for 42 days. Gamez Lira was detained on August 13 when federal agents surrounded his vehicle in Horizon City, Texas, with two of his young children present. He was held at the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, New Mexico, separated from his family including a three-month-old infant with serious medical conditions. The federal government declined to oppose his release.

In New Mexico, a father was en route to a school event when his vehicle was surrounded by agents in a supermarket parking lot. Agents smashed his window with a sledgehammer. His partner and two young girls slipped out the passenger side as an armed agent hovered beside the car. ICE, which was assisted by the San Juan County Sheriff's Office, claimed that when officers first tried to stop Jorge Martín Ortiz-Rosalez's vehicle earlier that day, he fled at high speed.

Deivi Jose Molina-Pena, a 33-year-old Venezuelan on Temporary Protected Status, was arrested by ICE agents at a Walmart on July 7, 2025, while working as a delivery driver for Walmart's Spark service. Video captured agents using a Taser to subdue him as he fell and struck his head. Molina-Pena remained in ICE custody in El Paso with reported head pain and no medical evaluation. His arrest followed tensions between American-born and immigrant delivery drivers, with American drivers reportedly calling ICE hotlines to report immigrants' locations.

Sergei Izbitski, 46, has lived in the U.S. for 34 years after leaving Kazakhstan as a boy. He built a successful painting and remodeling business in New Jersey and maintained a home there with no criminal history. On June 9, 2025, ICE arrested Izbitski and transported him to Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, New Mexico. He cannot be deported because Kazakhstan will not recognize him as a citizen, and no other country will accept him, yet he remains detained without bond hearings under the Trump administration's interpretation of immigration law subjecting long-term non-citizen residents to mandatory detention. His case is one of more than 100 similar cases in New Mexico where individuals face indefinite detention while challenging the government's detention policy.

A man who has lived in the U.S. since leaving Kazakhstan in 1991 and is not a citizen of any country has no criminal record and owns a home and business. He was detained by ICE in June 2025 and held at the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico while challenging his indefinite detention through a federal habeas corpus petition. On December 29, 2025, a U.S. Magistrate Judge recommended that the court grant his petition, finding he is being indefinitely detained without a significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably foreseeable future, as required under Supreme Court precedent. The case remains before the district court for final disposition.

Sergei Izbitski, a 46-year-old who has lived in the U.S. since 1991 after leaving Kazakhstan as a boy, was arrested by ICE on June 9 and held at the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico. He is stateless, not a citizen of Kazakhstan, owns a home and runs his own business, and has no criminal record. On December 29, 2025, a federal magistrate judge recommended that a district court grant his habeas corpus petition, finding his continued detention unconstitutional under Zadvydas v. Davis because there is no significant likelihood of his removal in the reasonably foreseeable future. The recommendation follows a habeas petition Izbitski filed in August 2025 after being held for months without a bond hearing.

On June 5, 2025, ICE agents conducted a sweep of the Rio Rancho Walmart parking lot, detaining approximately a dozen delivery drivers from Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, and elsewhere. The operation was prompted by calls to ICE hotlines from American-born delivery drivers reporting the locations of immigrant workers. Sandoval County Sheriff's Office provided support to the operation. At least three of those detained remain in custody, though none have been confirmed deported.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent, Andrew Josiah Segura, was charged with assault and evidence tampering following an incident on February 19, 2025, in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. The charges allege he assaulted a handcuffed detainee and physically threatened CBP employees while performing official duties.

Tarlis Marcone De Barros Gonçalves, a transgender asylum seeker from Brazil who fled threats to her life, entered the U.S. near El Paso on February 15, 2025, and was detained at the Otero County Processing Center before being flown to a U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In a declaration filed as part of the lawsuit Espinoza Escalona v. Noem—brought by the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, and International Refugee Assistance Project to stop ICE from sending immigrants to Guantánamo—she said she was housed with five men despite objecting, searched by male guards, allowed outside only 25 minutes a day, and given just one set of clothes with little food. She said guards communicated only in English, which she does not speak, and that she had no privacy using the bathroom or showering. She was later transferred to an ICE facility in Pine Prairie, Louisiana, where agents shackled her so tightly during the flight that she was in pain for days afterward.

On Feb. 21, 2025, a Border Patrol agent boarded a Las Cruces Public Schools charter bus carrying 12 swim team students and two staff members to the state championships in Albuquerque, after the Spanish-speaking driver could not answer the agent's questions in English. Coach Pamela Quiñones said the agent began yelling in Spanish and demanding documentation from all passengers without further questioning the adults, leaving students visibly shaken. Border Patrol called it a routine immigration inspection, noting the bus had no school decals and was treated as a standard charter vehicle, and said all passengers were confirmed to be legally present before agents left without incident. U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez criticized the stop, saying no student or coach should face intimidating enforcement actions and raising concerns about the checkpoint system's impact on civil rights.