Human Impact Project

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.

Josue Isai Pire-Hidalgo, a 31-year-old custodian at Farnsworth Elementary School in Chicago Public Schools, was detained by ICE on July 17 during what he believed was a routine immigration appointment tied to his family's asylum case. Pire-Hidalgo, a Venezuelan national with Temporary Protected Status and a pending asylum application, has no criminal record. His wife, Yulexis Padilla Julio, and their two children, ages 13 and 6, were detained alongside him but released; his wife was fitted with an ankle monitor and continued advocating for his release. Their 6-year-old daughter has asthma requiring daily medication, and Pire-Hidalgo has hearing loss in both ears and relies on hearing aids. He was held at a jail in Clay County, Indiana, describing the conditions as difficult, while the school community and SEIU Local 73 organized support including a GoFundMe that raised nearly $15,000 and meal trains for the family. After 42 days in ICE custody, he was released and reunited with his family.

Luis Hernández, a 38-year-old Nicaraguan migrant who marched in Nicaragua's 2018 pro-democracy protests, had been denied asylum but granted protection from deportation under the Convention Against Torture. He was detained at a routine immigration check-in in February and taken to a Texas tarmac on Aug. 28, where he says he was struck twice in the back and once in the knee with pepper-spray canisters and was never notified he would be sent to Africa. He told the Los Angeles Times he went days without eating or sleeping after arriving in Bangui, where he was housed in a complex monitored by armed guards.

An Ecuadorian man who entered the U.S. in October 2022 and was released the next day on conditional humanitarian parole had lived in Long Beach, California with his wife, two daughters, and several U.S. citizen family members, including grandchildren. He worked as a cleaner at a laundromat and in production at a seafood company, attended church weekly, cared for his family, and sent money to his ailing mother in Ecuador. He is a derivative of his wife's pending asylum application based on gang violence and retaliation in Ecuador. He was detained by ICE on August 27, 2026 after appearing for a scheduled check-in, despite having complied with all reporting requirements and having no criminal history. He is held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, where he has not received medical care for back and hip pain following a recent surgery. He filed a habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 arguing his re-detention violated procedural and substantive due process, and because the government failed to respond, the court granted the petition on procedural due process grounds and ordered his release within 24 hours.

Clayton Herman, a Winnipeg-born Canadian citizen who had lived in Ojai, California, was taken into ICE custody in October 2025 after being accused of violating supervision conditions based on readings from a monitoring device he described as "glitchy." He had entered the U.S. legally two decades earlier but overstayed his visa, and had been reporting regularly to ICE since 2022 while his case moved through immigration court. Released in mid-June, he was detained again on July 21 during a routine check-in at an ICE office and held at the Adelanto, California facility run by the GEO Group until he was deported to Canada on Aug. 26, describing poor food, moldy walls and inadequate medical care during his time in custody.

A native and citizen of Cambodia who was admitted to the United States as the child of a refugee in 1982 was detained by ICE on August 26, 2026, when she reported for a scheduled check-in. She had been under a 2004 final order of removal stemming from a 2001 California drug conviction, but was never removed and lived under supervised release for years. She was briefly detained again in August 2025 before being released under a class-action settlement requiring 14 days' notice before re-detention. In September 2025, a California court vacated the underlying conviction, and her motion to reopen her immigration case remains pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals. After Cambodia issued a travel document and the BIA denied a stay of removal, ICE revoked her release and took her back into custody, later scheduling her for transfer and removal by charter flight. She is currently held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and filed a habeas petition seeking immediate release or a bar on her removal and transfer. The federal court denied her request for a temporary restraining order, finding it lacked jurisdiction to block her removal and that she had not shown a likelihood of success on her detention claims, while her underlying habeas petition remains pending.

Ledgar Ramses Delgado-Reyes, a 25-year-old Venezuelan man who entered the U.S. seeking asylum in 2023 and was granted work authorization, was reunited with his wife, Madeline Ramos-Delgado, in Las Cruces after posting a $14,000 bond following nearly a year in immigration detention. Reyes said he was called in to sign paperwork correcting an address discrepancy and was told it would be quick, but was instead detained by ICE officers. His attorney said an immigration judge found he had no criminal history, was not a flight risk given his U.S. citizen wife had relocated to be near him, and had a possibility of success in his pending asylum claim. His family raised the bond money through a GoFundMe campaign.

Julio Borrell, a 72-year-old Cuban mechanic who arrived in Florida during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, was arrested during a routine immigration check-in last December after 46 years of never missing an appointment. He was held about four months at the Florida detention facility known as "Alligator Alcatraz," transferred to a processing site in Eloy, Arizona, and then bused nearly two days to Tapachula, Mexico — a city he said he had never heard of, more than 1,100 miles from the nearest U.S. border crossing. Now surviving by patching tires on the street and saving for a room to rent, Borrell is the father of seven U.S.-born children, eleven grandchildren and a great-grandchild whom he can only reach by borrowed phone; he told his daughter, "I won't die in Tapachula." His case is part of a broader U.S. practice, tied to Mexico's Interior Repatriation Programme, of flying deportees far from the border into remote interior cities like Tapachula and Villahermosa.

Sisi Rose, 33, a member of the Cheyenne River and Sisseton-Wahpeton tribes, was tased and tackled to the pavement by police while protesting outside the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations office in Sacramento, California. An officer allegedly shot pepper spray into her mouth and then arrested her for assault after she spit it out, while officers knelt on her neck with their body weight. She was hospitalized after the taser probe embedded into the bone of her wrist, with doctors saying it may not be safely removed for a week, and she continued to experience burning and respiratory distress from the pepper spray. Rose said she has been protesting for months against what she calls ICE's unlawful detentions of Native Americans and U.S. citizens, saying, "My kids could be snatched up off the streets, and we're from here, and that scares me."

Blerim Skoro, a 55-year-old Kosovo-born cab driver from Staten Island with an American wife and three children, was detained by ICE agents on August 3 while checking in at an immigration office in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Skoro says he spent years working as a confidential informant for U.S. intelligence agencies, infiltrating al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan and helping secure convictions of members of al Qaeda, al Shabaab and Hezbollah. In November 2022 a federal judge granted him deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture after finding he faced risk of torture and death if returned to Kosovo. His wife, Susan Skoro, said he was taken away after checking in at the front desk, and his former attorney and his taxi union's executive director described him as having led a law-abiding life and performed courageous work for the United States. His attorney, Joshua Dratel, filed a habeas corpus petition arguing ICE detained him without first seeking required judicial permission, and the case has proceeded through expedited briefing in federal court.

Venkata Vasamsetty, a 59-year-old green card holder who moved to the U.S. from India in 1999, works as a special-needs substitute teacher with Wake County Public School System in Cary, North Carolina, and is a grandmother with a husband, two U.S.-citizen daughters, and grandchildren. Her immigration troubles began after a 2022 trip to India to care for her ill father, during which she contracted COVID-19 and remained abroad for more than seven months, prompting DHS to allege she had abandoned her permanent residency. An immigration judge dismissed that case in May after DHS missed a court deadline, but she was detained anyway during a check-in at the Charlotte ICE office her attorney said she was not legally required to attend, and was transferred to the Irwin County Detention Center in rural Georgia. Her daughter Teja, an immigration attorney, said she was shackled during the arrest while family pleaded with officers. Family and her attorney, Helen Parsonage, said her type 2 diabetes worsened in custody, with low blood sugar, weight loss, and the facility largely ignoring requests for an adequate vegetarian diet respecting her Hindu dietary restrictions. After more than two weeks in detention, an immigration judge in Georgia granted her release on a $7,500 bond, citing her long-standing U.S. ties, a home, tax returns dating back to 2012, her teaching job, and her history of never missing a court appearance or check-in.

A Chinese national entered the United States on a B-2 visitor visa in February 2026, authorized to stay until August 6, 2026. His spouse filed an asylum application in late July 2026 naming him as a derivative beneficiary. On August 24, 2026, after his visa had expired, he appeared with his spouse and children at a USCIS-directed biometrics appointment, where ICE officers arrested him. DHS issued a Notice to Appear alleging removability and detained him under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, where he remained held for about three weeks with no bond hearing yet held. He filed a habeas corpus petition and a motion for a temporary restraining order arguing his detention without a prompt neutral hearing violated due process and seeking immediate release. The court denied the habeas petition, finding he had not shown a due process violation because this was his first ICE detention and he had not yet sought or been denied a bond hearing, and denied the TRO motion as moot.

Jianxian Yu, a 52-year-old asylum seeker from China who has lived in the United States since December 2019, was arrested by ICE immediately after attending a scheduled interview on his pending asylum application at a USCIS office in Tustin, California on April 9, 2026. He had entered lawfully on a B-2 visitor visa, filed for asylum in 2021, and was granted employment authorization while his case remained pending; during his time in the U.S. he started his own business, held a valid driver's license, paid taxes, and became an active member of his church, being baptized in 2025. He had no criminal convictions and had complied with all immigration appointments. His arrest was based on a claimed foreign warrant referral from Chinese authorities, though the government never submitted the warrant or supporting evidence, and his notice to appear listed only a visa overstay. An immigration judge denied him bond on April 29, 2026, citing flight risk, after which he was transferred to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. Yu filed a federal habeas petition arguing his detention violated due process, and on August 21, 2026, a magistrate judge granted the petition, ordering his immediate release and barring re-detention without prior notice and a hearing; the case was then dismissed with prejudice.

Luis Adolfo Nouel Gonzalez, a Venezuelan immigrant who worked in construction helping build the QTS data center in Fairfax, Iowa, was detained by ICE after appearing for a scheduled check-in appointment at the Cedar Rapids ICE office. Gonzalez had lived in Iowa for three years with his wife and daughter, was inspected and paroled into the U.S., applied for asylum and Temporary Protected Status, and has no criminal record in Iowa. Advocacy group Escucha Mi Voz said he complied with all conditions of his parole, with member Rogelio Lagunas stating, "Luis did everything the government required of him." His attorney, Raziel Argueta, said the detention followed the Trump administration's termination of TPS for Venezuela, which was upheld by a court in June. The Department of Homeland Security said Gonzalez entered the country near San Luis, Arizona in 2022 and does not hold lawful immigration status. He is being held in Hardin County.

Carlos Tellez Sanchez, a 35-year-old Venezuelan man who fled to Dallas, Texas in 2021, worked days at a car dealership and nights delivering for Uber Eats to support his family. He held a 2021 Withholding of Removal order protecting him from deportation to Venezuela and had no criminal record beyond civil immigration violations, but was detained by ICE in December 2025 during what he believed was a routine check-in appointment. After nearly eight months in detention, he was flown in handcuffs to Liberia on August 20, 2026, along with 19 other deportees, nearly 6,000 miles from his wife and newborn U.S. citizen son, whom he has only seen via video calls since the boy's birth. His brother, Juan Tellez, described him as 'a good person and hard worker' who 'doesn't deserve what happened to him.' He said returning to Venezuela is not an option because he fears for his safety there, and he is now staying at a hotel in Liberia while deciding whether to seek asylum there or travel elsewhere.

Pedro Joaquin Aviles-Mena, a Nicaraguan citizen, was detained at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022 and subsequently released on parole. After living and working in the United States for more than two years, he was re-detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a scheduled check-in. He filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus and sought a temporary restraining order, arguing his re-detention violated procedural due process under the Fifth Amendment and that mandatory detention under the expedited removal statute no longer applied to him once he had been paroled into the country. A federal judge granted the temporary restraining order and later a preliminary injunction ordering his release, finding he had raised a serious question on the merits and enjoining the government from re-detaining him. On August 20, 2026, the court granted his habeas petition on the merits, ruling that he may not be re-detained without notice and a hearing before a neutral decisionmaker absent a material change in circumstances.

Masuma Khan, 64, a Bangladeshi immigrant with no criminal history who arrived in the U.S. in 1997 and has long worked at a local restaurant, was detained at the California City Detention Facility after a routine ICE check-in in October 2025. During her month in custody, she intermittently or never received medications for high blood pressure, hypothyroidism, prediabetes, and glaucoma, receiving asthma medication only two days before release and never getting eye drops; staff told her to buy medications from the commissary, which did not stock them. Since her release, Khan has suffered PTSD and ongoing health issues, and has become fearful of leaving her home. Advocates allege ICE uses intimidation tactics on detainees nearing release, including driving them to airport tarmacs to pressure self-deportation. Supporters are now urging California lawmakers, including Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, and Governor Gavin Newsom, to pass SB995, the Masuma Khan Justice Act.

A Colombian mother was separated from her two young children during a routine ICE check-in in Baltimore, despite an immigration judge having ruled she would likely face torture or persecution if deported to Colombia. She was transferred to the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona and remained in ICE custody for months afterward. An Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting analysis identified her as one of more than 120 immigrants in Arizona whom ICE continued to detain even after judges had barred their deportation to their home countries due to humanitarian protections.

Camila Toro de Paula, a 25-year-old transgender woman from Venezuela, has been held for nearly a year at a men's ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, after being arrested during a routine immigration check-in at ICE's New York City office in August 2025. She fled Venezuela after suffering childhood abuse, including repeated rape by relatives and a homophobic stabbing attack by police, and sought asylum in the U.S. two years ago. Toro de Paula says she has been assaulted, threatened, placed in solitary confinement, denied water, and deprived of the hormone therapy she had received for years, after a policy protecting transgender detainees was eliminated in February 2025. She told The New York Times, "I'm afraid of dying here," and says she has resisted pressure to voluntarily return to Venezuela. Immigration officials cited felony assault and weapons charges as justification for her detention, though both charges were later dismissed and sealed.

A., a 45-year-old Venezuelan man who worked in the wind energy sector and held protection against forced return to Venezuela, was detained by ICE at a routine immigration check-in earlier in 2026 while his wife, who had the same protection, was released. He was transferred through four detention centers, suffered severe anxiety and depression, and said his lawyer was never informed about the transfers or his deportation. He was shackled hand and foot during the roughly 15-hour flight to Liberia after an officer told him he would be put on the plane "willingly or by force," and he said other passengers began crying once seated. His daughter has been in therapy since his deportation, and he fears ICE will also detain his wife, leaving his children without either parent in the United States; Liberia has reportedly agreed to accept about 1,200 people over one year under an agreement with the Trump administration.