Human Impact Project

David Vargas-Rivera, a Mexican national, was arrested by ICE Dallas officers on January 12, 2026, in Frisco, Texas. According to federal authorities, Vargas-Rivera is wanted in Mexico on homicide charges and is suspected of laundering more than $4.6 million through real estate transactions in 2025. Authorities also noted he had previously been arrested in Canada and Colombia. He was deported on July 14, 2026, and turned over to Mexican law enforcement authorities.

Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos, a 5-year-old U.S. citizen from Austin, Texas, who misses her cousins, classmates and kindergarten teachers, was deported to Honduras alongside her mother, Karen Guadalupe Gutiérrez Castellanos. The removal stemmed from an administrative deportation order issued against the mother in 2019, before Génesis was born. According to advocacy group Grassroots Leadership, Austin police responding to an early-morning disturbance call found no incident but identified the ICE warrant, leading to the arrest of both mother and daughter. They were held incommunicado for nearly a week at a San Antonio hotel without access to legal representation or a judge, with authorities allegedly pressuring them not to disclose their location, preventing attorneys from intervening before deportation. The mother briefly reached her brother by phone to say they were about to be removed, and later called from Honduras to confirm the deportation. She has said she plans to send her daughter back to the U.S. with another relative, since Génesis is a U.S. citizen.

A 5-year-old girl who is a U.S. citizen was taken into ICE custody along with her mother in the Oak Hill area of Austin after police responded to a disturbance call. Officers identified that the mother had an outstanding ICE administrative warrant and notified federal authorities, who then took both mother and daughter into custody. The family says no effort was made to contact relatives or involve Child Protective Services before the child was transferred into ICE custody. Relatives have since been unable to locate the child in government databases and are seeking custody arrangements so she can stay with family while her mother remains detained.

Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, a 42-year-old Honduran man with no criminal history, died on January 5, 2026 at HCA Houston Healthcare in Conroe, Texas after complications from congestive heart failure. He was detained by ICE on November 17, 2025 while on his way to work and initially held at Montgomery Processing Center before being transferred to Joe Corley ICE Processing Center on November 25. Despite repeated requests, he was unable to access medication needed to manage his congenital heart condition while in ICE custody. He was hospitalized on December 23, 2025 for worsening heart complications, admitted to intensive care on December 31 after multiple severe medical episodes, and died on January 5. His family faced a $4,000 cost to transport his body to Honduras for burial.

Juan Nicolas, a two-month-old baby, is the youngest person currently in ICE custody and is being held with his mother Mireya López Sánchez at a family detention center in Dulles, Texas. Due to poor conditions including rotten food and contaminated water, the mother stopped producing milk and the baby became sick. The child suffered a medical emergency but has not been seen by a doctor as there is none on site and immigration officials refuse to send him to a hospital.

The Trump administration is seeking to deport two men who witnessed the January 3 death of Geraldo Lunas Campos at a Texas detention camp. The eyewitness accounts of the two men differ from the Department of Homeland Security's official account of the incident.

A 31-year-old Cuban man, identified as Ricardo H., reported being beaten by approximately 15 guards at Camp East Montana detention center at Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas, after spending more than 20 hours without food and banging on a metal door to request meals. According to his account documented in a Human Rights Watch and ACLU report, six agents held him down face-first, stomped on his neck, and caused injuries to his ear and collarbone. The 84-page report, based on interviews with 80 people detained at the facility between October 2025 and June 2026, documents a pattern of alleged abuses including raids by masked agents without visible identification, unsanitary conditions, and cases of people detained despite documentation of legal status. The report also documents the death of another Cuban detainee, Gerardo Lunas Campos, 55, on January 3, 2026, whose autopsy determined the cause of death was asphyxiation due to compression of the neck and torso, classified as homicide.

Adayomi Ademuyiwa, a Dallas prison guard who had invoked his right to a speedy trial, was deported to Nigeria by ICE in January 2026 despite a federal judge having released him on conditions months earlier. His attorney, Paul Lund, asked the court to dismiss the federal indictment since the government's own action prevented him from appearing, but Chief District Judge David Godbey declined to do so at the March 2 trial date. The judge also denied the prosecution's request for a bench warrant should Ademuyiwa return to the U.S.

Rev. James Eliud Ngahu Mwangi, a Kenyan-born Episcopal priest serving as assistant rector in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas and employed as a correctional officer with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, was detained by ICE on October 24-25, 2025, while returning home from work in Huntsville, Texas. ICE alleged he had overstayed his B1 visa, despite Mwangi holding a valid work permit verified through E-Verify and lawful employment status. His family was unable to locate him for several days before learning he was being held at a detention facility in Conroe, Texas. The Episcopal Diocese of Texas publicly disputed ICE's claims, called for due process and humane treatment, and coordinated legal counsel to document his employment and immigration records. Despite his pending asylum application, Mwangi was denied bond and spent months in detention he described as punitive and emotionally draining before voluntarily departing to Kenya in early January 2026, a decision his attorney said was meant to preserve his eligibility to legally re-enter the United States in the future.

A Houston man who is a third-generation U.S. citizen says he was stopped by ICE agents on January 1 while driving to work near Veterans Memorial Drive and Beltway 8. The man, David Flores, believes he was racially profiled based on his work truck and was surrounded by eight ICE agents in multiple vehicles. After showing his passport and refusing to provide his Social Security number, the agents left abruptly when Flores began recording the encounter.

Zahra Razavinik, a 66-year-old Iranian immigrant, has taught preschoolers at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston for nearly 30 years and cared for her husband with a heart condition. She was detained by ICE in January 2026 during a routine immigration check-in and has been held at El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas for six months. Her attorneys argue she cannot safely return to Iran because she is Christian and faces persecution there, and that no other country has agreed to accept her. A 2006 immigration judge's order had previously granted her a stay of deportation due to risk of persecution as a Christian.

Multiple Minnesota residents detained by ICE in January 2026 and transported to Camp East Montana detention center in El Paso, Texas reported serious medical neglect and unsafe conditions. An 18-year-old legal resident with a thyroid condition arrived with severe abdominal pain but received no medication during her detention and had her documents taken upon release. A Cuban man with a pending asylum application waited five days to see medical staff, at which point he was diagnosed with COVID. Two detainees under age 21 were placed in a holding cell with 40 people despite its 20-person capacity, and detainees reported limited phone access and inadequate food. In March 2026, U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison, D-Minn., a doctor, conducted an unannounced oversight visit to the facility, where security initially delayed her entry for about an hour. She was not permitted to speak with detainees but was shown an empty tent structure holding pods of 64 to 72 people with crammed metal bunk beds, partial-privacy showers, and about six sinks, comparing the facility's appearance to a commercial livestock building.

Jose Sanchez was detained by ICE in November 2025 and deported to Mexico despite having a pending citizenship case. He died in January 2026 while attempting to cross the Rio Grande to return to his family in San Antonio. His partner, Tiffany Barrera, is a U.S. citizen and mother of five.

A shop foreman and asylum seeker who entered the United States on November 2, 2022, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on December 31, 2025, at a routine immigration check-in appointment without a warrant or explanation. Despite having complied with all terms of his release for nearly three years, maintaining employment as a shop foreman, applying for asylum and permanent residency, and having no criminal history, he was held for nearly six months without a hearing. A federal district court granted his habeas petition on June 26, 2026, finding his detention violated Fifth Amendment due process protections and ordering his immediate release.

An ICE agent driving into the Crosspoint check-in facility in San Antonio pointed a gun at two community members from Comrade Coffee Collective who were filming and distributing aid outside the facility. One volunteer said hello to the agent from a distance, prompting him to reach for his gun and point it at her despite her backing away, then at another volunteer further away.

Marwan Marouf, a North Texas community leader who served the Muslim community for 30 years, was arrested by ICE on September 22, 2025, the same day his green card application was denied based on allegations from over a decade ago. He was transferred to Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, and the Muslim Legal Fund of America challenged the denial in immigration and federal court. After 60 days in detention, Marouf appeared before Immigration Judge Abdias Tida and accepted deportation rather than continue fighting his case.

Lucía Pedro Juan and Francisco Gaspar-Andrés, a couple married 25 years, were arrested during a traffic stop in Florida in September 2025 and transferred to Fort Bliss ICE detention facility in El Paso. They were held separately and ICE agents ordered them not to communicate during processing. Pedro Juan was deported to Guatemala on November 28 without being allowed to see her husband. Gaspar-Andrés died on December 3 at a hospital in El Paso after 10 weeks in custody. At least 30 people died in ICE custody during 2025.

Ignacio Sosnava Rodriguez had lived in Texas for 22 years before ICE detained him following a traffic stop in 2025. Rodriguez filed a habeas corpus petition arguing that holding him without a bond hearing violated his Fifth Amendment right to due process. A lower court granted his petition in February using the Mathews v. Eldridge framework and released him from ICE custody. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision, denying Rodriguez's petition and ruling that immigrants in removal proceedings have no constitutional right to bond hearings regardless of length of residence in the United States.

On December 11, 2024, Border Patrol agent Armando Flores shot and killed Isaias Sanchez Barbosa, a 31-year-old Mexican man with no criminal history, no prior U.S. entries, and no family in the United States, during a struggle near the Rio Grande in Starr County, Texas. A grand jury declined to indict Flores in June 2025, but Texas Rangers and federal investigators have kept the case open, and no body camera footage or complete official account has been released. An autopsy found three close-range gunshot wounds to Sanchez Barbosa's chest and forearm that fractured a rib and tore both lungs. A search of a nearby ranch, authorized by a warrant that went unfiled for months due to what officials called a clerical error, found no weapons, consistent with none being found on Sanchez Barbosa himself.

Immigrant families detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas describe prolonged stays, despondent children, limited access to potable water, and inadequate food in court declarations filed in December 2025. A report from Human Rights First and RAICES found more than 5,600 people, including parents, toddlers and newborns, were held at the facility between April 2025 and February 2026, alleging months-long detentions, limited access to asylum protections, poor medical care and psychological harm. A Canadian citizen living in Texas said she and her 7-year-old daughter were detained for hours at a checkpoint and later transferred to a processing center despite her pending lawful immigration status. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security maintain the facility is safe and family-friendly, providing food, medical care, education and legal access, and say some detained families raise enforcement or security concerns.