Human Impact Project

Roxana Valladares, a 29-year-old Salvadoran woman, spent the night at a hospital in Homestead, Florida with her 6-year-old son, who had a fever and was struggling to breathe, before rushing to line up outside the Miami immigration court for a mass hearing. She arrived by Uber at 4 a.m. with a blanket, a change of clothes, a cooler with water and snacks, and a folding beach chair, ending up third in line for a 1 p.m. hearing amid crowds stretching around the building. Her son slept on a blanket on the sidewalk while she fanned him as they waited. Valladares said she had originally been scheduled for a hearing in September 2027 but received a notice the week before to appear instead. She said she crossed the border two years earlier to seek asylum after fleeing domestic violence and fearing for her life and her son's, and that she was told missing the hearing could result in an automatic deportation order.

Liliana and Jorge, a couple in their 30s from Michoacán, Mexico, believed they had until 2029 to find an attorney and prepare for their asylum hearing, but in mid-August 2026 they received notice that their hearing had been moved up to Sept. 11 at immigration court in Concord, California. Unable to find a lawyer on short notice, the couple appeared alone with their four children, ages 3, 6, 14 and 15. During the three-hour proceeding, Judge Michael Rapizo told Liliana her lack of evidence reflected a 'lack of diligence' rather than circumstances beyond her control, and said her claimed fear of her ex-partner, who she said is affiliated with a cartel in Michoacán, did not rise to the level of past persecution. 'I feel discouraged,' Liliana said afterward. 'We were not prepared.' An attorney with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice said she has seen dozens of immigrants in recent weeks similarly forced into unprepared, fast-tracked hearings without lawyers.

A Mexican man identified only as John Doe, who testified against drug traffickers on behalf of U.S. prosecutors, was arrested by ICE as soon as he returned to U.S. soil despite a federal judge's order allowing his safe return. He had been deported three times, most recently on August 1, to an area of high drug-trafficking activity in Mexico, even though an immigration judge had deferred his deportation in 2024 under the Convention Against Torture due to fears he could be tortured by the Mexican government or others acting with its consent. He was never enrolled in the federal witness protection program despite cooperating in criminal cases, and his lawyer, Anna Tijerina, says his life remains at risk from organized crime. U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher had ordered that if detained again, he be held within 200 miles of Baltimore, where he lived, with guaranteed access to his attorney.

Pietro Graza de Lima, a gay Brazilian man who lived in Orlando, Florida for about seven years running a small services business, fled Brazil after corrupt police shot him over his sexuality, an attack that cost him a kidney and left lasting physical damage. After his student visa expired and he was arrested for drug possession, ICE detained him for nearly two years, including time at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona. On April 16, 2026, an immigration judge granted him protection from deportation to Brazil under the Convention Against Torture, but ICE continued holding him while seeking another country to deport him to. After he refused to sign a document accepting removal to Liberia, he was shackled for roughly 36 hours and flown to Liberia—where he and other detainees refused to disembark—and then to Equatorial Guinea, a country with which he has no ties. His attorney said he was denied the interview he was entitled to under CAT protections before being sent there. He and about a dozen other deportees have been confined at a decommissioned hotel, Hotel Bamy, in Malabo, where armed officers confiscated his phone on September 8, 2026 after he spoke with journalists, cutting off contact with his attorneys and leaving him unreachable since September 9, 2026.

Nelson Contreras-Gelves, a 35-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker who arrived in the U.S. in 2022, was detained by ICE in Philadelphia on June 27, 2026, just a week after his wedding reception with wife Ariel Whaley of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. He had been following all required immigration procedures at the time of his arrest. Contreras-Gelves worked as a distribution associate at Mighty Writers, a nonprofit in New Garden Township, where colleagues described him as 'irreplaceable' and part of their extended family. He was held for about three weeks at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia before being transferred to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, where he faced repeated bond denials and described scalding shower water, insect infestations, poor food, and inadequate medical care. A crowdfunding campaign raised more than $38,000 to help cover legal costs and household expenses. He was unexpectedly released on September 10, 2026, and now wears an ankle monitor, is restricted to travel within Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, and must attend frequent check-ins.

Maria Rosales, a 32-year-old DACA recipient who came to the U.S. from Colombia as a young child and has lived in Florida for nearly three decades, was detained without warrant by ICE agents at Logan Airport on July 10, 2026, while returning home after a trip to Boston. She works as a dermatologist's assistant treating skin cancer patients and founded a nonprofit color guard organization that provides performing arts opportunities to young people in the Orlando area, with friends and colleagues describing her as a dedicated community leader. ICE cited a 2017 removal order from a New Mexico immigration checkpoint stop that Rosales says she was never properly informed of, and her attorney contends the warrant used to justify her detention may have been fabricated after she was already in custody. She was held for 10 days at ICE's Burlington, Massachusetts facility, where she reported inconsistent access to showers, food, water, and medication, and rooms holding as many as eight women at a time. A federal judge ordered her release after finding ICE failed to comply with statutory detention procedures, and she subsequently filed a lawsuit against the agency, which a judge refused to dismiss in September.

Tareq Zakarneh, a 44-year-old Palestinian man who lived in Portland and Vancouver, Washington for more than a decade, has been in ICE detention since May 2024, mostly at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. He moved to the U.S. on a student visa in 2013 to attend Portland State University and later married a U.S. citizen, but lost his legal status after a divorce in 2017, when an immigration court found the marriage was not entered in good faith. Zakarneh said ICE agents beat him and broke his teeth on Sept. 9 after he refused to board a deportation flight to the West Bank via Tel Aviv, restraining him on the floor for four hours without access to water or a bathroom, leaving his hand and shoulder swollen and numb while he received only ibuprofen. Advocates and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden have raised concerns about his treatment and the danger he could face if deported amid escalating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Ernestina Pavlovsky, a 33-year-old Argentine personal trainer who lived in Aspen, Colorado for 13 years, was detained by plainclothes ICE agents at Miami International Airport on August 1 while returning from visiting family. She was held for several days in Miramar/Pompano Beach, Florida, where her partner said constant lighting felt like 'a torture chamber,' before being shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles and driven overnight to the CoreCivic-run Laredo Processing Center in Texas. She has no criminal record, had entered the U.S. on a tourist visa, and had a stalled application to regularize her status after a divorce from a U.S. citizen. She and her family described conditions at the Laredo facility including rats, cockroaches, ants, mold, contaminated water, restricted bottled-water access, and sleep deprivation from overnight guard patrols. A judge initially denied her bond over flight-risk concerns, but at a September 1 hearing granted her request for voluntary departure. She remains in ICE custody in Texas awaiting a flight back to Argentina, and supporters have raised roughly $50,000 through a GoFundMe campaign for her legal costs.

Natalie Holmes, 51, a Jamaican national and ordained pastor, says she was deported to Equatorial Guinea in June while her habeas corpus petition challenging her removal was still pending. She remains among 29 men and women held indefinitely at the decommissioned Hotel Bamy in Malabo, where deportees say they have been dragged from their rooms at gunpoint, handcuffed, assaulted and threatened by armed guards. Witnesses and Amnesty International report that two men at the hotel were recently hooded, bound, beaten with guns and shoved down stairs by police, allegedly to stop them from exposing deteriorating conditions. American judges had ruled that most of those held, including Holmes, could not be deported to their home countries due to risk of torture or persecution, yet Equatorial Guinea has granted them no legal status, documents, medical care or legal assistance.

Peta-Gaye Chambers, 35, who came to the United States from Jamaica as a child, had been granted 'withholding of removal' by a U.S. immigration judge in 2013 after he found she would face persecution in Jamaica. Despite that protection, ICE deported her to Equatorial Guinea in June without notice. Chambers says she and other deportees were dragged from their rooms at gunpoint, handcuffed, assaulted and threatened by armed guards at the decommissioned Hotel Bamy in Malabo, where she remains held.

Katsiaryna Bartko, a 33-year-old Belarusian asylum seeker and thyroid cancer survivor, is being held at the CoreCivic-operated Midwest Regional Reception Center in Leavenworth, Kansas, where her partner says her medical condition has severely deteriorated. Lab records show her thyroid-stimulating hormone level spiked to more than 31 times the normal range, with dropping calcium levels causing pain, spasms and voice loss, and she has not been seen by an endocrinologist despite a referral. Days before a federal court hearing on her medical care, she was moved to a solitary isolation room and staff allegedly attempted to confiscate legal documents she had prepared for the hearing. Bartko entered the U.S. legally in 2022 and applied for asylum in 2023 after speaking out against the Belarusian government and the war in Ukraine.

Adnero Pinto Sebastiao, an Angolan national with a pending asylum application, was arrested by ICE agents as he returned from lunch to his job at a bank in the Lewiston area. He had entered the U.S. legally on a tourist visa in March 2024 before applying for asylum, and his immigration case remains pending. His attorneys filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus arguing the detention was an unlawful warrantless arrest lacking individualized assessment. A federal judge issued an indefinite injunction barring ICE from removing him from the U.S. or transferring him out of the District of Maine, and ordered the government to justify the detention. A DHS spokesperson said Sebastiao overstayed his visa and that a pending asylum application does not confer legal status.

Jose Diaz, a father of three and the primary provider for his family, was detained by ICE on September 3, 2026. At a court hearing on September 28, his family learned he needs $30,000 for release, in addition to legal fees. His son Luis Diaz describes him as a devoted family man and man of faith who has always supported his children's education and goals, and the family is now struggling financially and emotionally since his detention.

Eduardo, known as Walter, was detained by immigration agents while resting during his lunch break at work and sent to a detention facility in Georgia. He has since been repeatedly transferred between ICE facilities, limiting contact with his family to two-minute daily phone calls. Walter, described by his family as faithful and headstrong, had a pending case for legal residency and a work permit. His wife and daughters are raising money for legal fees and a possible bond ahead of an upcoming court hearing.

More than 60 federal agents raided the Nutrition Bar Confectioners plant in Cato, New York in September 2025, herding roughly 160 workers into a breakroom and arresting 57 of about 100 people questioned, including pregnant women and mothers of young children. Body camera footage later released in a lawsuit showed agents breaking down a locked bathroom stall door to remove a female employee and separating workers by citizenship status, with some told they would be arrested if they asked for an attorney. Argentina Juarez-Lopez, 50, invoked her right to counsel, but an agent falsely claimed she confessed without one; a federal judge called the conduct 'grossly negligent' and suppressed the evidence, yet she was deported after her case was dismissed. Juana Castillo Avelar, a mother of three U.S. citizen children who had lived in the U.S. over 20 years, was granted $9,000 bond but was deported before ICE would release her, based on a false claim she had appealed. Only five of the 57 arrested faced criminal charges, mostly for illegal reentry, and no charges have been filed against the company. The New York Civil Liberties Union and the Worker Justice Center of New York filed a lawsuit alleging officers lacked arrest warrants, exceeded search warrant authority, and violated workers' Fourth Amendment rights; one deported plaintiff has since been allowed to reenter the country while attorneys for another seek his return.

An Iranian woman in her early thirties, a pro-democracy activist who said she had been threatened by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, fled Iran, crossed the Darién Gap, and arrived in the U.S. at the end of 2024, where a judge granted her legal protection from being deported back to Iran after finding she had credible fear of persecution. Despite that protection, she was deported on June 12, 2026, from Louisiana to the Central African Republic on a flight carrying roughly two dozen migrants from countries including Jordan, Armenia, Turkey, Georgia, and Afghanistan, under the Trump administration's third-country deportation agreements. Her attorney, Emily Trostle, said she was left in a country where she has no status, no connection, and no support network. She now lives in isolation, afraid to leave her apartment, and says local police have extorted her for cash. Her family said she could be killed if ever returned to Iran, and she fears execution if her situation changes once her temporary visa expires. Two other Iranian women originally scheduled for the same flight, whose asylum claims had been denied under a transit rule later vacated by a California federal court, received emergency court orders temporarily halting their removal.

A teenage asylum seeker identified in court records as E.L.A., now 19, was deported to El Salvador for a second time, prompting a federal judge to hold the Department of Homeland Security in contempt on September 25 for violating three separate court orders in the class-action case J.O.P. v. DHS. He had first been removed in March 2026 after missing biometrics appointments in April and October 2025, then returned to the U.S. in June after class counsel arranged for his asylum case to proceed. A July 29 court order found the government had breached the settlement, but he was deported again in September, less than three weeks after DHS issued internal guidance meant to prevent such removals.

Julio Alfredo De Ávila Hernández, who worked as a driver in Guadalajara, disappeared in Jalisco, Mexico, ten years ago after a cartel forced him into running packages and threatened to kill his family if he quit. His mother, Blanca Hernández, 59, says a hitman began following Julio and that he had no way out. Julio's parents and siblings later fled to the United States and applied for asylum, but an immigration judge ruled in April that they must continue their asylum process in Ecuador, Honduras, or Guatemala instead of remaining in the U.S. The family has filed an appeal to try to stay; Julio's sister, Alondra De Ávila, 26, who crossed the border with her four-year-old son in 2024 to turn themselves in to immigration authorities, said, "We want to stay here. I don't want my son to live what I lived."

Alex Ramirez Gonzalez and Yan Vasquez Hidalgo, a married Cuban couple working in environmental services at SUNY Upstate Medical University, were detained by ICE after appearing for a scheduled immigration hearing in Mattydale, New York. The couple had fled Cuba, entered the U.S. in 2021, turned themselves in to seek asylum, and held valid work authorization. They said they were handcuffed and chained before being transported to a federal detention facility, where they were held for nearly four months, mostly separated from each other. In January, two immigration judges ruled they could not seek asylum in the U.S. but could pursue it in Ecuador, a country to which they have no connection; their lawyer appealed, and the case remains pending. They were released on bond, with one required to wear an ankle monitor, and have returned to their jobs and families in Syracuse. A third coworker, Mohamed Fofana, remains in ICE custody in Texas.

Maisa Lopes Eliaser, a 32-year-old Brazilian national married to Fort Polk Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo, was detained by ICE on July 8, 2026, after missing an immigration appointment and overstaying a tourist visa she had used to enter the U.S. in 2019. She spent more than a month held at the ICE processing center in Basile, Louisiana, separated from the couple's five-year-old son. On August 14, she was placed on a deportation flight to Brazil, but after a stop in Bogotá, Colombia, ICE officers received a call and gave her the choice to return to the U.S., which she took, and she was released from custody. Eliaser said she struggled to sleep and felt dehumanized by the detention experience. Following media coverage and a Congressional inquiry into deportations of military family members, she has a new immigration appointment to reopen her case and pursue her green card application, while the family's appeal remains pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals.