Human Impact Project

Abel Orozco, a 47-year-old who has lived in suburban Chicago for 30 years and owns a tree-cutting business, was arrested by ICE on January 26 while driving home from picking up tamales for his family. According to his attorney, Orozco has no criminal record and arrived in the U.S. in the late 1990s under a legal work petition, though he was given a removal order in 2004 after visiting his father in Mexico. ICE officers apprehended him without a warrant, searching for his oldest son who shares the same name. Orozco has been detained in Kentucky for nearly six months facing expedited deportation. His family has missed mortgage payments and his younger son struggles to maintain his father's business while his wife fights breast cancer. Orozco is among 22 detainees alleging that immigration agents violated federal law and a 2022 settlement by arresting them without proper warrants or proof of flight risk, with a motion filed challenging the legality of the arrests.

U.S. Border Patrol agents conducted raids around Bakersfield in Kern County in January 2025, stopping and arresting 78 people, predominantly Latinos and farmworkers, often without reasonable suspicion. Video circulated showing agents slashing the tires of a U.S. citizen gardener on his way to work during the operation. In April 2025, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston issued an 88-page order finding the agents likely violated constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and ordered them to halt such stops and warrantless arrests in California's Eastern District, but Border Patrol continued operations in Los Angeles and Sacramento despite the court order.