Human Impact Project

Queer and trans immigrants detained at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center alleged they were forced into an unsanctioned work program performing hard manual labor for minimal pay, and sexually harassed and assaulted by an assistant warden named Manuel Reyes between 2023 and 2025. Detainees reported facing medical neglect, retaliation for reporting abuse, and having their complaints systematically ignored by ICE officials. Four detainees filed administrative complaints under the Federal Tort Claims Act, and civil rights complaints were submitted to DHS oversight bodies by RFK Human Rights, the ACLU of Louisiana, and the National Immigration Project.

Juan Barbosa Gomez, a 60-year-old Mexican national with a valid work visa and clean criminal record, was arrested by ICE officers on October 15 in Portland, Oregon. His family claims the arrest was wrongful and says he has lived and worked legally in the U.S. for over 30 years. Since his arrest, Barbosa has been transferred between multiple detention facilities across three states and does not appear on ICE's online detainee locator, leaving his family unable to locate him or mount a legal defense.

Leo Cruz Silva, a 34-year-old Mexican national, died by suicide on October 4, 2025, in Ste. Genevieve County Jail while in ICE custody. Arrested on September 30 for public intoxication in Festus, Missouri, Silva was transferred to ICE custody on October 1 for reinstatement of a prior removal order. During his first days in custody, he experienced acute mental distress, including auditory and visual hallucinations, paranoia, and attempts to leave his cell. On October 3, jail staff observed him hiding under his bed, and a medical provider ordered antipsychotic medications, though treatment was not immediately scheduled. On October 4 at approximately 3:20 p.m., jail employees found him with a sheet tied around his neck. Staff removed the ligature and began CPR; he was pronounced dead at 3:47 p.m. Silva had entered the U.S. without documents and had been deported twice between 2010 and 2025 before re-entering. His death was the second reported suicide in ICE custody in Missouri in 2025. On October 13, about 50 community members gathered for a vigil organized by Abide in Love Ste. Genevieve. The DHS Office of Inspector General and ICE Office of Professional Responsibility are reviewing the case, examining intake screenings, wellness checks, medical response timing, and compliance with detention protocols.

ICE detained numerous asylum-seekers and migrants at the San Diego federal courthouse basement between October 9-21, 2025, after summoning them for routine check-ins. Detainees reported being held in crowded cells for up to four days in conditions they described as inadequate, including limited bedding (yoga mat-like mattresses), no privacy for bathroom use, cold temperatures, fluorescent lights kept on all night, inedible food, and lack of medical attention. Families were denied proper goodbyes, and detainees were not searchable in ICE's locator system. Some were subsequently deported or transferred to other detention facilities without proper legal proceedings.

Noor Nafea Salman, a 28-year-old lawful permanent resident and medical student at the University of Virginia, was detained by ICE on October 9, 2025, during what she believed would be a routine immigration check-in appointment. Salman, who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee from Iraq at age 17 and graduated from James Madison University, has been complying with ICE check-ins for six years prior to her detention. She is married to Khaled, a Palestinian-American U.S. citizen, and her mother and five siblings are all U.S. citizens. Since her detention at Diamondback Detention Center in Oklahoma and other facilities in Texas, Salman's health has deteriorated significantly over approximately ten months. She has been hospitalized multiple times for asthma complications, suffered a fall she believes caused a concussion, and has become extremely weak. Her husband visits weekly from 250 miles away, and her family continues to advocate for her release and access to proper medical care.

Despite having Convention Against Torture protection barring removal to El Salvador, C.O. was detained by ICE in May 2025 and pressured to accept removal to Mexico. After refusing, ICE transported him to the border and handed him to Mexican authorities, who drove him to Guatemala, which transferred him to El Salvador — all while shackled. Salvadoran authorities threatened to send him to CECOT. His family has had no contact since October 9, 2025.

José Medina, a 35-year-old tamal vendor, was arrested by immigration authorities on October 8, 2025, while selling tamales at a 7-Eleven in San Pedro. After his detention, his family feared additional raids and stayed home with 720 unsold tamales. Community members, including artist Rubén Ochoa and his girlfriend, mobilized to sell the tamales through personal deliveries. Medina signed a deportation order and was in Tijuana by October 10, leaving his family behind.

An Indian citizen with a 2003 removal order was re-detained by ICE on October 7, 2025 after nearly two decades on supervised release. He had been released from detention in 2006 after six months because the government could not obtain travel documents from India. Despite complying with all supervision conditions for nearly 20 years, he was re-detained and has been held for over 5 months at Port Isabel Detention Center while India continues to refuse issuing travel documents.

P.R., a 42-year-old Cambodian national, was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his family fled the Cambodian genocide. He entered the United States in 1985 at age three and lived there for 40 years. In 2010 he was ordered removed to Thailand, a country where he is neither citizen nor national. After completing his sentence in January 2025, he was held by ICE nine additional months before being deported to Eswatini on October 6, 2025.

K.V.V., a 49-year-old Vietnamese national, came to the United States as a refugee at age eight in 1984. After a criminal conviction he was ordered removed in 2007 and remained on supervised release for 18 years. ICE arrested him in March 2025 and deported him to Eswatini on October 6, 2025, without attempting deportation to Vietnam. His physical and mental health have deteriorated significantly in detention, with his family reporting weight loss and emotional distress.

Emmanuel González García, a 15-year-old with intellectual disability, speech impediment, and partial deafness, went missing on October 4, 2025, after wandering from his mother Maria García's fruit stand in northwest Houston. Houston Fire Department found him the next day, but Houston Police Department failed to link him to his mother's missing-person report due to a name discrepancy and instead contacted ICE, which transferred him to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Maria had no way to know her son's location for five days until an immigration attorney called the missing-persons hotline on his behalf, and he underwent emergency appendicitis surgery while in custody. Emmanuel remained in federal detention for a total of 48 days despite his mother's pleas for his release, during which members of a local group, Autism Moms of Houston, held nightly vigils outside the facility in support.

Huabing Xie, a 47-year-old immigrant from China, died on September 29 after suffering a seizure while detained at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico. Staff began CPR and used a defibrillator after observing the seizure at about 2:13 p.m., but Xie was pronounced dead at 3:15 p.m. at El Centro Regional Medical Center. ICE records show Xie was first arrested by Border Patrol near Tecate in December 2023 and released, then arrested again in September 2024 in Indio before being transferred to ICE custody. ICE said it notified the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, its own Office of Professional Responsibility, and the Chinese consulate, and that a public report would be posted online. This marks the second ICE custody death in California in two weeks, and immigrants' rights groups have called for a full investigation.

Mario Guevara, an Emmy-award-winning Spanish-language journalist who lived in Atlanta for nearly 22 years with a valid work permit, was arrested on June 14, 2025, while live-streaming a 'No Kings' protest in DeKalb County, Georgia, and charged with obstruction, unlawful assembly, and improperly entering a roadway. Though a judge granted him bond, ICE placed a hold on him and he spent over 100 days in detention, including up to 22 hours daily in solitary confinement, separated from his wife and children. A federal judge questioned the legality of his detention, and the ACLU and his attorneys argued it violated his constitutional rights to free speech and due process, while the government claimed broad discretion to detain him and denied targeting him for his journalism, citing a decade-old removal order. The Bureau of Immigration Appeals ordered his removal on September 19, and he was deported to El Salvador on October 3, 2025, after which he continued working as a journalist, reporting from Central America and speaking at international press freedom conferences.

Oak Park Township Trustee Juan Munoz was arrested outside the Broadview ICE facility on October 3, 2025, while protesting in a designated protest-free zone, and detained for about eight hours without being told why or what he was accused of. He testified on January 22, 2026, before the HART Truth-Telling Commission that then-Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino tackled him to the ground, that he was questioned by FBI agents without an attorney present, and that detainees had to share shoes taken from them during processing because conditions inside were unsanitary. Munoz said he was used as a backdrop for an interview Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem gave to a social media influencer, calling it propaganda, and said tactics he has observed used recently in Minnesota are likely a preview of what could come to Illinois. He is pursuing legal action over his treatment, which prompted a joint press conference from Oak Park's elected bodies denouncing his arrest.

Kyle Frankovich, a protester, was arrested outside the Broadview ICE facility on October 3 while demonstrating in a designated protest zone. Federal agents grabbed and threw him to the ground, zip-tied him, and detained him for approximately eight hours without explanation or charges, making him stand along a guardrail for 40 minutes as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem walked past with cameras and photographers. He was later released without documentation or charges, and the following week his fiancée Leigh Kunkle was shot in the face with pepper balls by federal agents during another protest at the same site; the couple's attorney has filed federal claims alleging wrongful detention and violation of rights. On the same day Frankovich was detained, federal agents took multiple other protesters into custody as a crowd grew outside the facility amid newly installed barricades, with Illinois State Police also deployed in riot gear; at least five protesters have since faced federal charges from clashes at the site, where agents have repeatedly used tear gas and pepper balls against demonstrators.

LT, a 30-year-old Haitian asylum seeker, was detained at Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, 1,500 miles from her 13-month-old daughter in Florida. Her baby, who is allergic to formula and has food sensitivities, vomited constantly and needed breastmilk. The government denied her petition to pump and mail breastmilk, denied bringing the child into detention, and refused bond. LT fled political violence in Haiti where supporters of an opposing party burned her house, kidnapped and raped her. She fears her daughter will end up in foster care.

A father from Guatemala, separated from his daughter at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017, was returned to Guatemala under the first Trump administration but came back to Florida in 2021 to reunite with his children under the Ms. L settlement agreement. He was re-separated from his children in October 2025 after being stopped in West Palm Beach while performing landscaping work near Mar-a-Lago. He was detained first at Alligator Alcatraz in the Florida Everglades, then transferred to Camp East Montana in Texas, where he reported being fed moldy food with worms and berated by guards; he also learned that a fellow detainee died from mistreatment. The ACLU filed a motion on behalf of detained Ms. L parents, and he was released in April 2026. Though reunited with his children, he continues to feel tracked through ankle monitoring and required bi-weekly ICE check-ins, and his children worry he will not be present when they leave school.

Carlton Junior Burke, a 25-year-old Jamaican national, was arrested by ICE at his home in Madison, Wisconsin on October 1, 2025, after overstaying a B2 tourist visa he entered on in 2021. Burke says his passport and driver's licenses were taken during detention and not returned to him, disputing DHS's claim that ICE does not confiscate documents. He had built a life in the U.S., married, and was attempting to adjust his immigration status when arrested. Burke was transferred through multiple detention facilities over several months, including county jails and a correctional facility in Indiana, where he raised concerns about food quality, limited medical assistance, and inadequate family communication. He was granted voluntary departure on January 7, 2026, and ultimately left the country on January 28, 2026, leaving his wife and young child behind in the United States.

Jean, a 33-year-old Haitian, was deported from the United States to Mexico in late October 2025. He was transferred by bus to Villahermosa, then relocated to Cancún, where he was left without official assistance or resources. He submitted an asylum application to COMAR in mid-November but has not received confirmation of receipt. Jean cannot work because he is undocumented, cannot leave Quintana Roo state where he filed his application, and cannot access banking services or receive money from relatives.

Stanley Minjale, who immigrated to the United States from Malawi in 2021 on a student visa initially valid through 2022, later received an extension through March 2027, but that status was terminated after he failed to enroll in a university as required. At the time of his detention in October 2025, he held a valid work permit and was employed full-time as a nursing assistant in Indiana. He has a nearly two-year-old U.S. citizen son, and during his nine-month detention at North Lake Processing Center he has missed several of the boy's milestones, including his second birthday. Minjale has received a deportation order but continues to appeal, describing life in detention as a difficult, repetitive routine without freedom.