Human Impact Project

An unnamed Iranian man in his 40s, who participated in the "Women, Life, Freedom" protests against mandatory hijab laws, fled Iran in 2024 with his wife and another couple. He arrived at the U.S. border later that year; his pregnant wife was released on parole but he remained in ICE custody. On September 30, 2025, despite his resistance and pleas that he would be killed if returned, he was placed in a restraint jacket and forcibly deported on a flight from Alexandria, Louisiana. After the plane arrived in Tehran, ICE handed over his belongings—including his cell phone and communications with his lawyer—to Iranian authorities. The man, who is Kurdish, fled over 300 miles west to Iraqi Kurdistan that first night. His wife and newborn child, who remain in Kentucky, have not seen him since.

West Africans deported from the United States to Ghana under a deportation agreement were subsequently transferred to Togo without proper documentation or identification papers. Between six and ten individuals, including nationals from Nigeria, Liberia, Gambia, and Togo, arrived in Ghana via U.S. military plane in shackles after being detained in U.S. facilities. Despite some having legal protections against deportation, they were transferred across the border to Togo and left on the street. Their lawyers pursued legal cases arguing rights violations, though some legal challenges against Ghana's government were withdrawn.

Paramjit Singh, a lawful permanent resident who has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years and runs a business in Fort Wayne, was detained by ICE and DHS at Chicago's O'Hare Airport on July 30, 2025. He was held incommunicado for five days before being hospitalized, and his family only learned of his whereabouts when a hospital bill arrived. DHS has cited a 25-year-old infraction related to a payphone and an alleged 2008 forgery conviction that reportedly does not exist as grounds for his detention and removal. An immigration judge ordered his release on a $10,000 bond in August, but DHS filed an automatic stay to keep him detained. Singh, who suffers from a progressive brain tumor causing vision loss, remains held at the Boone County Jail in Kentucky, with removal proceedings scheduled for September 29.

Ayman Soliman, an Egyptian-born imam and hospital chaplain at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, was detained by ICE on July 9, 2025, during a routine immigration check-in appointment after USCIS terminated his asylum status. Authorities alleged he provided material support to terrorists through involvement with an Egyptian charity organization. During approximately 10 weeks in custody at Butler County Jail, Soliman was held in freezing conditions, placed in isolation, and denied access to his attorney. The Department of Homeland Security subsequently withdrew its deportation case after court filings documented errors and inconsistencies in the government's evidence. Soliman was released in mid-to-late September 2025, his asylum status was reinstated, and his green card application was revived.

Harjit Kaur, a 73-year-old Sikh grandmother who had lived legally in the East Bay for over 30 years with no criminal record, was detained by ICE on September 8, 2025, after being asked to turn in paperwork at the San Francisco office during a routine check-in. Kaur had lived in Hercules, worked for two decades at Sari Palace in Berkeley, and regularly attended the El Sobrante Sikh Gurdwara; she has two grandsons and three granddaughters. Family members and roughly 200 community members held a protest at the El Sobrante Gurdwara demanding her release, with her daughter-in-law Manji Kaur calling the situation 'a total nightmare.' During her 15-day detention at facilities in Bakersfield and Georgia, Kaur reported being denied basic hygiene supplies, vegetarian meals consistent with her faith, and water for her medication, and was forced to sleep on cell floors. Despite her attorney's requests for release with monitoring or accompaniment on a commercial flight due to her age and medical conditions, Kaur was deported to India on September 22 without advance notice to her family and without being allowed to return home or say goodbye.

Wesley Powers, a U.S. Navy veteran and U.S. citizen, was shot with chemical agent by ICE agents while protesting at Minnesota's Whipple Detention Center in January 2026. He was detained for 9 hours in an overcrowded cell, had his lawyer calls monitored, and was photographed by agents using personal phones before being released without charges. Powers reports subsequent incidents including vehicles at his home and lost work income.

ICE agents detained Willian Gimenez in Little Village on September 12 while he entered a barbershop with his wife. ICE refused to disclose his location and denied his attorneys access to him. Gimenez is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Home Depot and off-duty Chicago police for targeting immigrant day laborers.

Denis Omar Rivera Martinez, a 42-year-old parent from Honduras, was arrested by ICE agents outside Gerald E. Talbot Community School on September 11 and deported to Honduras on October 8. An immigration judge ordered his removal before Rivera Martinez could appear in court for a pending domestic violence charge, preventing him from responding to the allegations. The District Attorney stated ICE did not notify her office of his deportation status, and a scheduled court hearing on Thursday found neither prosecutors nor the judge aware of his whereabouts.

A San Diego law firm filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court seeking to stop ICE from arresting asylum seekers at immigration court hearings. The lawsuit argues that courthouse arrests violate constitutional rights and due process and impact the immigration court system. The suit was filed on behalf of two asylum seekers arrested at San Diego's immigration court, both of whom had no criminal records and regularly attended their hearings.

On September 4, 2025, 14 people were deported from U.S. detention to Ghana on military aircraft as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign to African countries. Four detainees were placed in straitjackets when they refused to board without speaking to their lawyers. The group landed in Accra after 16 hours with no explanation provided and no documentation given. According to lawyers, the actual group consisted of 11 detainees (four Nigerians, three Togolese, two Malians, one Liberian, and one Gambian), who were held at Bundase Military Camp with irregular food and water supply. On September 23, eight were deported by Ghana to Togo and given approximately $100 each, with two reportedly taken to Mali and one remaining in Ghana.

K.S., a Gambian citizen and LGBTQ+ community member who had obtained humanitarian parole to remain in the U.S., was removed from a Louisiana detention center without explanation on September 4, 2025, chained and placed on a military aircraft. He was deported to Ghana as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign to African countries. K.S. had fled Gambia where LGBTQ+ status is punishable by up to life in prison, and expressed his fear of returning to his homeland to Ghanaian officials, but immigration authorities proceeded with the deportation anyway. He is currently in hiding.

On September 4, 2025, roughly 60 armed and masked federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations, ICE, CBP and local sheriff's offices raided the Nutrition Bar Confectioners plant in Cato, New York, a town of 2,500 people east of Syracuse. Officers broke down a locked bathroom door on female employees, herded over 100 workers into a break room, and separated them by citizenship status without individualized suspicion, questioning pregnant employees and parents worried about children waiting at home. Investigators also interviewed the plant's general manager about hiring practices and potential fraudulent documents, while officers searched offices, storage rooms and hallways for anyone in hiding and debated which company files to seize. At least 57 workers were arrested, more than 20 were separated from their children, and some were denied access to attorneys or family before being sent to out-of-state detention facilities. Pedro Rojas, a U.S. citizen who was seized and interrogated, said agents targeted him and his coworkers because they are Latino. Only five of those arrested faced criminal charges, the most serious being unlawful reentry, and two plaintiffs were deported, though one has since been allowed to reenter the country. The NYCLU and the Worker Justice Center of New York filed a class action lawsuit against DHS alleging officers exceeded their search warrants and violated workers' Fourth Amendment rights, and body camera footage reviewed by the Associated Press as part of that lawsuit has now become public.

Ramiro G., a 45-year-old Cuban man detained at Camp East Montana, was twice subjected to attempted forced expulsion to Mexico. On September 22, 2025, he was woken at midnight, chained, and bused with about 15 mostly Cuban men to the border. Guards told them to cross into Mexico. Ramiro refused, saying he was Cuban, had no ties to Mexico, and had previously been kidnapped by a cartel there. Some men crossed; Ramiro and three others refused and were returned. On December 15, guards tried again, this time telling him he was being transferred to another facility. When he overheard guards mention the Santa Teresa port of entry, a guard admitted the transfer was being carried out 'in secret.' He began shaking uncontrollably. Other detainees banged on doors in protest until he was returned to his cell. Guards had told him: 'Your country won't take you; leave now or we'll lock you up for life.'

Maribel Lopez, a Guatemalan mother of three who fled years of abuse in her home country, was detained in early September 2025 when federal agents raided the nutrition-bar factory where she worked in Central New York. Although her pending asylum appeal should have protected her from removal, she was deported to Guatemala within four days of the raid. Her 2-year-old son, Jorge, remained in the U.S. in the care of his two older siblings, who are barely adults themselves. Her case was profiled by The New York Times as part of a growing pattern of rapid deportations that bypass pending legal claims.

Immigration attorneys and relatives reported conditions at ICE's field office in Northern Virginia, including detainees receiving only one meal a day, 40-90 people in single rooms with no beds, and some held for up to seven days without bathing. The facility, designed as a temporary holding office, has become overcrowded due to increased immigration arrests in Washington D.C. since mid-August. Attorneys reported detainees are being denied legal representation, medical care, and basic hygiene access.

Jemmy Jimenez Rosa, a 42-year-old legal permanent resident from Peru with a valid green card for over 20 years and mother of four, was detained by CBP and ICE for 10 days after returning from a family vacation in Mexico on August 11, 2025. Her detention was based on a marijuana possession conviction from over 20 years ago that had been pardoned and her record sealed. Rosa was initially held at Boston Logan International Airport for four days without proper medication or access to basic necessities, then transferred to a detention center in Maine without being informed she had legal representation despite CBP agents promising to relay that information. She experienced an anxiety attack during detention. She was not entered into any federal detainee database for three days, making it difficult for lawyers to locate her or seek a bond hearing. Her attorney challenged the detention as unconstitutional, leading to her release on August 28, 2025.

ICE told Somali asylum seekers they were being deported to Somalia, but instead flew them to the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where several remain detained. Sakariye Abdi Mohamed, a truck driver with no criminal record, was stopped by an Alabama trooper and held nearly a year in Louisiana before being flown to Guantánamo; a colleague described him as a hardworking 'rookie truck driver' who did everything right. Adam Abdullah, a 31-year-old mechanic with a pending asylum case and work permit, was stopped in Minnesota during 'Operation Metro Surge' and moved through facilities in three states over nine months before arriving at Guantánamo, where he has limited attorney access and brief, possibly monitored phone calls. Fellow detainees Abdullahi Adam Mohamed, a mechanic and small business owner, and Hassan Abdi Abtidoon, a former rideshare driver turned back while seeking asylum in Canada, were also transferred there. Detainees describe being shackled at all times, held in frigid conditions with cameras in bathrooms, and have held hunger strikes; family members call the ordeal 'shocking and frightening.' DHS has claimed the group included 'some of the worst of the worst' with criminal histories, though this reflects the agency's allegation rather than confirmed fact.

Catholic priest Gustavo Andres Santos Higuera (also referred to as Father Gustavo Santos), a Venezuelan national born in Valencia in 1993 who moved to the U.S. in 2012, was denied reentry by Customs and Border Protection at Miami International Airport on August 19, 2025, while returning from an international trip via London, despite holding a valid R-1 religious-worker visa valid through November 2025. Santos, ordained a deacon in 2022, had served as parochial vicar at St. John Neumann Church in Miami since 2023. Archbishop of Miami Thomas Wenski and pro bono immigration attorneys from Catholic Legal Services petitioned a federal court for his release, alleging he was denied access to counsel and asking that authorities be barred from transferring him out of Florida. The Archdiocese called the detention 'unexpected and unjust.' CBP subsequently reconsidered and released Santos, allowing him to reenter the country and resume his ministry. He later announced his resignation from the parish and said he would move to another assignment, surprising parishioners who praised his pastoral work.

In August 2025, ICE confirmed the arrests of 24 construction workers in Centre County, Pennsylvania, who were on their way to a construction site at Mount Nittany Medical Center's patient tower project. On August 19, around 7 a.m., ICE agents pulled over a van of workers on Interstate 99 near Bellefonte; other workers from the same site were stopped near the Milesburg exit on Highway 220 about an hour later. Advocates said the 24 to 26 men detained were from Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras, and described them as fathers, sons and brothers whose arrests disrupted their families and the local workforce. A foreman driving several workers said he was pulled over by two unmarked vehicles and that many detained had valid identification and work permits. The men were reportedly taken to Pike County Correctional Facility, Clinton County Correctional Facility, and Moshannon Valley Processing Center, with advocates and a state lawmaker saying they struggled to obtain information about detainees' whereabouts and alleging some may have been misled or coerced into signing self-deportation orders. The raid preceded a similar operation near Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, and advocates described both as part of a pattern of immigration enforcement near hospitals in central Pennsylvania.

Gagne Diagne, a Senegalese immigrant and DoorDash delivery worker, was arrested by masked federal agents outside his Bronx home on August 14 while his wife and infant were upstairs. He was detained for six days and nearly deported to Senegal before a judge granted his habeas petition and reopened his asylum case, leading to his release. The Amadou Ly Foundation, which supports West African immigrants, helped secure his release through legal advocacy.