Human Impact Project

Santiago Merlo, a Colombian man living in California, posted his car for sale on Facebook Marketplace. Months later, a purported buyer using the name "Brian" arranged to meet him to see the vehicle. When Merlo arrived, he says about 10 patrol units with federal agents were waiting, and he was handcuffed and detained. Merlo says he had a valid work permit and a pending asylum application at the time he was later deported to Colombia.

Anastasio Tomas, a 16-year-old student at Chattanooga Preparatory School who had lived in the U.S. since age six, was deported to Guatemala along with his mother, Maria Vasquez-Mazariegos, and another family member after ICE arrested them on September 16, 2026 in Chattanooga. Tomas said agents stopped the family on their way to school, did not give them a chance to explain their immigration case or speak with a lawyer, and falsely told them they were being taken to see a judge. ICE said the family had received a final removal order in 2019 and had not left the country. A GoFundMe campaign, which received a $2,000 donation from Chattanooga Prep's founders, is raising money for legal fees to help Tomas return to finish his education.

Ydienays Dariana Dominguez, 26, and her six-year-old daughter Zoeh were detained by ICE agents during what the family believed was a routine immigration check-in in Charlotte. The family had lived in the U.S. since 2024, where Ydienays's husband Anderson works as a barber, Ydienays worked at a warehouse, and Zoeh had just started first grade at Sugar Creek Charter School. Their removal order stemmed from a July 9 virtual immigration hearing that a judge failed to attend, after which an advisor who was supposed to file an appeal never submitted it. Anderson said an ICE officer initially indicated the pair would be transferred to Texas, but he later learned they had been deported to Venezuela before their attorney could file a motion to reopen the case, and he said he could not reach his wife or daughter for nearly two days. Anderson started a GoFundMe to help the family rebuild, and advocacy group Siembra NC organized a press conference, with State Rep. Julia Greenfield saying the family did not receive due process before being removed.

A woman working at El Corralón, an immigrant-owned nightclub and restaurant in Memphis, was arrested during a pre-dawn ICE raid on August 30 dubbed 'Operation Corral Light' and, due to a prior removal order, was flown to Honduras within days, reuniting there with her husband who had been deported the previous year after a traffic stop. Her four U.S.-citizen children remain in Memphis with their grandmother, who said the youngest wakes up crying for his mother while a 16-year-old has taken on helping raise the younger kids; reunification is complicated because no power of attorney was arranged and the children lack passports. The raid, initially targeting illegal gambling and a Honduran national suspected of running criminal activity, resulted in 121 arrests after agents corralled patrons and employees, checked immigration status, and zip-tied them onto buses while children screamed for detained parents. Only five of those arrested had criminal histories, and advocacy group Vecindarios 901 said it is working to identify detainees and connect families with attorneys. The ACLU of Tennessee, a state representative, and Memphis's mayor questioned whether the operation exceeded the scope of its gambling and narcotics warrants, and advocates alleged agents beat two security guards.

Arelys Barahona-Martinez, a 40-year-old Honduran national, was detained by ICE on June 10 during a routine, scheduled check-in appointment at an ICE office in Dallas, where she had checked in without incident for years. She was transferred to a detention facility in Oklahoma and faces deportation under a removal order issued in 2005, after having entered the U.S. without authorization more than 20 years ago and again in 2018, reportedly to seek medical care for her son. She is married to retired Staff Sergeant Wilmer Trujillo, who served 20 years in the U.S. Army and Texas National Guard with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan; the couple's household includes his daughters and her 20-year-old son, a U.S. citizen with neurofibromatosis. Trujillo says she has no criminal record and that they have been working with an attorney to correct her immigration status. Her attorney argues she is eligible for permanent residency through marriage to a U.S. citizen and may qualify for a parole-in-place program for military families, though USCIS rejected her application in November 2024. She was later granted bond but remains in custody pending payment; advocates say she is one of at least 52 parents and spouses of active-duty service members detained since the administration took office.

Johnny Jules was arrested by ICE on September 15 in Columbus, Ohio after reporting for a mandatory check-in, even though he was pursuing a green card through his U.S.-citizen wife, Lourdes Miya Dorsonne. The couple, married since 2024, has a 1-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter who Dorsonne said keep asking where their father is. Jules survived a 2022 boat capsizing in the Mona Passage that killed 11 women, was later released from ICE custody with periodic check-in requirements, and was deported to Haiti on the same flight as Augustave despite having submitted marriage-based adjustment documents to ICE.

An unnamed client of immigration attorney Javier Rivera, a victim of domestic violence with legal protections meant to shield her from removal, was deported to Nicaragua in August. A federal court has already ordered her return to the United States. Rivera said the administration is 'in such a hurry to kick people out... that they aren't actually looking at the legality of some of this stuff.'

Paola Ferreira Dos Santos, a 21-year-old Brazilian woman who crossed into the U.S. in 2021 and worked cleaning construction sites in Massachusetts, was detained by ICE in 2025 after the car she was riding in to work was pursued by agents. Over 15 months she was moved through detention facilities in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Texas and Louisiana before being placed on a 16-hour restrained flight without being told her destination, arriving in Monrovia and being told, 'Welcome to Liberia. You're in Africa.' She was the only woman among a group of Latin American deportees sent under a U.S. agreement allowing Liberia to accept up to 1,200 deportees, and attorneys have told her it is now effectively impossible for her to return to the U.S. Dos Santos described detention conditions as psychological torture, saying detainees, including pregnant women, were denied medical care, and recounted a woman being bound at the hands and ankles after asking about her separated son, saying 'they tied her like she was cattle.' She also described being held for days without beds in a frigid room detainees called 'the freezer.'

In late August, ICE deported three Nicaraguan men to the Central African Republic, even though none of them had ties to that country and at least two had protections in place that barred their return to Nicaragua. The men reported being transported in handcuffs under duress and were left stranded in Bangui with uncertain immigration status. The deportations are part of a broader U.S. policy of sending migrants to third-party African countries when legal barriers prevent their return to their countries of origin.

Maureen Wanjiru Ngure, a 38-year-old public health nurse from Concord, California, was detained by ICE on August 14 during a routine check-in at the federal immigration office in San Francisco. Ngure came to the U.S. from Kenya in 2006 on a visitor's visa, became a nurse, married, had two children, and volunteered with Contra Costa County's COVID-19 response team, never missing a check-in in nearly two decades. She and her husband, Peter Mang'ara Muchendu, both U.S. citizens raising their children in the Bay Area, had been planning to relocate the family to Canada after she was offered a healthcare job there. Following her detention, she was transferred through facilities in California, Arizona, and Louisiana, at times sleeping on floors and losing her ID, phone, and wallet. She was served a third-country deportation order and ultimately deported to Kenya. "I felt depressed, I felt confused, I was asking the question: why," Ngure said.

Levi, a Honduran man who arrived in the U.S. at age 15 and has lived there for 20 years, was followed and detained by ICE after leaving a Home Depot in his work truck, despite holding a valid driver's license. He was held at the Aurora Processing Center for four days before being transferred to facilities in Florence, Arizona, and Alexandria, Louisiana, and was ultimately deported to Honduras. Levi built a family-owned construction business and is described by his community as hardworking, reliable, and kind. His wife Amanda, who works full-time supporting foster-care-impacted teenagers, and their four daughters remain in the United States without his income and support.

Samson Birhane, 47, arrived in the US as an Eritrean refugee at age 13 and lost his immigration status after a robbery conviction in 1988, though he had already served his sentence and had been regularly checking in with ICE as required. A US immigration judge had previously ruled he faced a risk of torture if returned to Eritrea, but he was instead deported to Equatorial Guinea under a $7.5 million agreement between the countries. On September 11, 2026, Birhane and fellow deportee Ahmed Soliman, who grew up in Phoenix after his family fled Egypt when he was young, were arrested after helping document abusive conditions at Hotel Bamy, a site used to detain US deportees; officers covered their heads with bags, beat them, and pushed one down a staircase while demanding to know where phones were hidden, accusing them of breaking a mirror. Amnesty International said the men are now held in an overcrowded police cell without access to their attorneys and called for their immediate release, saying the arrest was retaliation for exposing authorities' efforts to coerce deportees into returning to their home countries; the group also cited a September 5 incident in which police pointed firearms at Soliman and other deportees.

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.

Esteban Rios Sosa and his wife, Luisa Rodriguez, were first stopped at a Camp Pendleton gate in September 2025 while trying to visit their pregnant daughter, who is married to a Marine, with their son Steve Rios, also a Marine. They were briefly detained, fitted with ankle monitors and told to check in with ICE weeks later; when they returned to the federal building in San Diego, agents detained them again, deporting Rios Sosa to Mexico within a day while Rodriguez was sent to Otay Mesa Detention Center. Both held pending U visa applications that USCIS had deemed bona fide, along with deferred action and work permits, though the agency said annual visa caps delayed approval; Rodriguez was released after about three weeks once an immigration judge recognized her deferred status. During nearly a year in Mexico, Rios Sosa said he feared being kidnapped and struggled with depression, while attorney Monika Langarica of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law filed suit in July arguing his due process rights were violated. U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino agreed, ruling he was deported without notice or a hearing and ordering his immediate return; he crossed back into the U.S. at the San Ysidro Port of Entry to reunite with his family, return to his job cleaning cars, and meet his new grandchild.

Wisteguens Jean Quely Charles, a Haitian national who had lived in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status since 2013, was arrested by ICE in the Boston area (Mattapan) on January 22, 2025, in a video that went viral after he shouted profanities and declared 'Biden forever' while resisting arrest. DHS said his TPS had been terminated by USCIS in 2022 after he accumulated 17 criminal convictions, including assault, weapons, and drug offenses, and alleged gang membership. Massachusetts' Norfolk House of Correction had released him in October 2023 without honoring an ICE detainer. He spent roughly 19 months in federal custody before an immigration judge issued a final removal order in November 2025. ICE deported Charles to Haiti on September 10, 2026, via a flight from Louisiana, during which officials said he became combative.

Anthony, a Zimbabwean man in his forties, was detained by ICE last year after crossing the US-Mexico border following a long and dangerous journey through Central America. He was subsequently deported to Cameroon, a country with which he has no ties, and now spends much of his time reading the Bible for comfort while facing uncertainty about his future.

Peter, a 51-year-old Kenyan man and country music fan whose son serves in the US Navy, lived in Dallas, Texas for 25 years before being deported to Cameroon, only learning his destination midway through the flight. After arriving, he contracted malaria and spent three days in the hospital on respiratory support. He has since had an interview with the UN refugee agency, which could grant him refugee status, though Cameroon may still decline to accept the outcome.

Ayana, 40, was born in a refugee camp in Sudan to an Eritrean mother and Ethiopian father and lived legally in the United States since she was two years old, building a life in San Diego where she studied business and worked as a nursing assistant and mother. ICE agents detained her while she was renewing her residence permit, and she was flown to Cameroon in shackles, a country with which she has no personal ties or documentation. She said a US judge had found her fear of returning to her family's home countries credible, but she was nonetheless removed to Cameroon under the Trump administration's third-country deportation policy, and now lives in fear and uncertainty in Yaounde with limited support.

Kenis Alberto López (also reported as Adalberto López), a 44-year-old Nicaraguan man held in U.S. immigration detention for about eight months, was deported to the Central African Republic on a flight departing Aug. 28-29 from Texas. He alleges ICE agents shot him with rubber or pepper-ball projectiles, injuring him, then bound, hooded, and dragged him before tying him to a stretcher to force him onto the plane, restraining him for roughly 24 hours. He told the Los Angeles Times he pleaded with agents, saying, 'I'd rather die here than in Africa.' The flight carried around 100 deportees, including migrants from Iran, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, with López traveling alongside fellow Nicaraguans Luis Carlos Mendoza Santamaría and Isaac Cruz. López says he has no criminal record, had received a deportation stay in 2024, and cannot return to Nicaragua due to danger there, though DHS says he re-entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and was later released under the Biden administration. He and the other Nicaraguan men are now confined under police custody in a housing complex in Bangui with roughly 40 other migrants, facing mobility restrictions and limited access to water and electricity. ICE has not responded to the mistreatment allegations.