Human Impact Project

A Venezuelan family, including a father, a mother who was seven months pregnant, and their 7-year-old son, was arrested by ICE during an interview for DHS's self-deportation program, according to Fwd.us president Todd Schulte. Rather than assisting the family in leaving the country as promised, DHS incarcerated them, and the mother has reportedly not received proper medical care while detained at the Dilley family detention facility.

The petitioner, who was lawfully admitted to the U.S. on a B-2 visa in March 2025, has resided in the country since then and applied for asylum in January 2026, a claim that remains pending. On August 29, 2026, she was detained after the vehicle she was riding in as a passenger, driven by her boyfriend, was stopped; the document states no process was provided to her during the detention. She is now in removal proceedings and has been held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. She has a history of breast cancer and takes related medication, and imaging taken since her detention showed a mass or tumor in her breast, yet for more than two weeks she received no follow-up care or prescribed medication. She filed a habeas corpus petition and a TRO application seeking release, arguing her detention violated due process. The government did not respond to the petition despite a court-ordered deadline, and the court granted the petition, ordering her immediate release on reasonable conditions without monetary bond.

Indi Veitia, a 47-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker who lives in Indianapolis with her wife and worked her way up from a warehouse job to a corporate position, was detained by ICE officers while walking to her gate at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport during a work trip. She said plain-clothes officers slammed her against the jetway wall, handcuffed her, and transported her in an unmarked vehicle before transferring her to a detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia, where she spent 21 days in a windowless dormitory with more than 60 other women sharing four toilets and showers, at times without running water or power, describing the conditions as 'inhumane.' Veitia entered the U.S. on a work visa in 2019 and later applied for asylum, holding a valid work permit and driver's license while her application had been pending since 2020. She was released on bond after friends and her employer wrote supporting letters and secured lawyers, but now wears a GPS ankle monitor and must report to the ICE field office in Indianapolis under a court order. Her attorney said asylum applicants like her are 'low-hanging fruit' for detention despite following legal processes, while DHS said a pending asylum application does not confer legal status. Veitia said, 'I have done everything that the government have asked me to do.'

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.

Jesús Bracho, a San Antonio father, and his 9-year-old daughter Katherine, a student at Bonnie Ellison Elementary School, were detained near Loop 410 and U.S. Highway 90 in San Antonio. Bracho said ICE agents arrested him during a traffic stop, then released him and forced him to lure Katherine out of their home so agents could detain her as well. The two were held together for more than a month at the South Texas Immigrant Processing Center in Dilley. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro visited the family and said Bracho was moved to tears with guilt, believing he was responsible for his daughter's detention. Their case drew concern from family members, activists, and Katherine's classmates before the two were released together from Dilley.

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.

Soumia Bensalah, a French Moroccan immigrant with a pending green card application, was repeatedly released from Pinellas County Jail and rebooked every 72 hours over five cycles in December, shackled and transported to an ICE office and back, totaling 26 days in custody that she said left her exhausted and humiliated. Legal experts say these 'rebookings' circumvent federal rules limiting how long county jails can hold immigrants for ICE. ProPublica found Pinellas County rebooked 174 immigrants and Orange County, Florida rebooked 559 immigrants this way, far more than any other jails nationwide, due to a shortage of ICE detention space. After the story's publication, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office provided an ICE memo dated Dec. 11, 2025, redesignating the jail as an 'over-72-hour facility' due to 'increased operational tempo,' after previously declining to clarify its earlier statement that the jail was meant to hold ICE detainees for only up to 72 hours.

José Efraín Chajón Raxón, a Guatemalan national, was detained by federal immigration agents during a raid in Passaic, New Jersey, one of at least 15 people taken into custody in the city that day as part of a broader sweep that detained at least 75 people in July, including one U.S. citizen. He was transferred to the Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark, where he suffered seizures and a medical emergency. He was released from ICE custody roughly a day and a half after the seizures began, then died at nearby University Hospital. His death was the second reported death linked to Delaney Hall in less than a month, and it went unreported for weeks because new rules stop recording deaths occurring shortly after release from ICE custody. His body was repatriated to his hometown of San Juan Sacatepéquez, Guatemala, where his community held vigils and a funeral. Community members said the wave of arrests emptied streets, parks, and businesses in the majority-Latino town.

Brandon Domena, a lifelong Passaic County, New Jersey resident and U.S. citizen, was detained by ICE agents for about five hours after a confrontation broke out while he and his family watched agents arrest a neighbor, reportedly a Mexican man wanted for domestic violence. Video showed agents in tactical gear restraining Domena face-down on a lawn and handcuffing him, with a witness saying his arm was nearly dislocated; he says he was left with bruises and marks on his hands. Domena said he repeatedly told agents he was a U.S. citizen, believes he was racially profiled, and was denied water, a restroom, medical attention and a phone call during his detention. DHS alleges he spit at and kicked an officer and was arrested on potential charges of assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers, but he has not been criminally charged. He disputes DHS's account, says an agent later apologized to him, was released the same day, and has hired a lawyer.

Ana Kikabidze, a green card holder from Georgia, spent 58 days detained with her children, 11-year-old Lizi and 14-year-old Nikoloz, at the Dilley immigration detention camp in Texas. An immigration judge ordered the family deported after warning that appealing could mean months more in detention, so Kikabidze gave up her fight and accepted deportation rather than keep her children locked up. "It felt as though the decision to deny us had already been made in advance," she said, "and that nothing I said would have changed the outcome." Her case is one of more than 66,000 parents and children detained and deported since the Trump administration expanded detention requirements, and a federal judge has since appointed an independent monitor to oversee conditions for children at Dilley.

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.

The petitioner, held in ICE custody at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, is mandatorily detained under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c) based on two misdemeanor convictions for criminal threats under California Penal Code § 422, along with a prior DUI conviction and a vandalism conviction. Roughly three months into his detention, he suffered a stroke on August 16, 2026, and was hospitalized for three days before being returned to Adelanto, where he was told he would not receive the physical therapy required by his discharge plan. He has since experienced worsening symptoms including severe headaches, facial drooping, difficulty eating and speaking, numbness, and mobility problems, without being provided a wheelchair or walker despite being classified as a fall risk. He also suffers from HIV, severe dental decay, a history of blood clots, and neurocognitive and mental health conditions, and medical experts submitted declarations warning that continued inadequate care could result in recurrent stroke, infection, or death. His attorney, who also serves as his qualified representative because he was deemed incompetent to represent himself, and his sister both submitted declarations describing his deteriorating condition. He filed a habeas petition and sought a temporary restraining order for release based on a substantive due process claim that his detention amounted to unconstitutional punishment given the inadequate medical care. The court granted the TRO, ordering his release by September 2, 2026, without requiring an ankle monitor, and ordered the government to show cause why the TRO should not be converted into a preliminary injunction.

Daniel Tirado Pantoja, 43, a construction worker who had lived in the U.S. for roughly 30 years and was applying for a green card, was detained by ICE on July 7, 2026, after witnessing the fatal shooting of his employer, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, during a Houston traffic stop. Tirado Pantoja, who has a U.S. citizen son and stepdaughters and is in a common-law marriage with a legal permanent resident, disputed ICE's account of the shooting, saying agents were never in front of the van when they opened fire. Held at the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, he lost 20 to 30 pounds and suffered depression linked to the trauma of the shooting and detention conditions, according to advocates supporting his family. U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett ruled his detention violated due process and ordered his release, and he was reunited with his wife outside the detention center on August 26, 2026.

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.

Victor Martinez Nieto and his 5-year-old son, Liam Tadeo, were detained by ICE agents during a traffic stop in North Austin on August 16, 2026, while driving to a children's soccer game. Video showed Liam crying and clutching his handcuffed father's hands; a family spokesperson said Liam had been due to start kindergarten that week. The two were held together at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, where attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said officials denied requests to release Liam to his mother in Austin rather than risk him being placed alone in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody. DHS said Martinez Nieto had entered near Laredo in 2022, was arrested in November 2025, and had reentered after a prior deportation. Lawmakers Joaquin Castro, Greg Casar, and James Talarico called for the pair's release and for Dilley's closure, with Castro denied a facility visit. Martinez Nieto agreed to depart voluntarily with his son, and the two were deported to Mexico, reuniting with relatives with help from the Mexican Consulate, while Liam's mother sought ways to reunite with him.

Patricia, a 19-year-old Honduran woman living in Austin, was separated from her 8-month-old breastfeeding son after she called 911 to report abuse by her boyfriend but was instead arrested on an assault charge. Prosecutors later dismissed the charge, but ICE took her into custody and held her nearly six weeks at the South Texas Detention Complex, where she suffered painful, swollen breasts and pleaded for a breast pump while her son stayed with a family friend. Patricia said she fled Honduras two years earlier after being raped by a gang member who continued to harass her, and that she had sought asylum in the U.S. Attorneys with the nonprofit American Gateways sued for her release, and U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia in San Antonio ruled that the government had violated the Constitution by detaining her without a hearing, ordering ICE to release her within two days. She was reunited with her son, but still faces a deportation order that her lawyers are appealing.

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.

Matthew Christian Torres, a 31-year-old security guard employed by Akima Protective Services at Krome Detention Center, was arrested on a felony grand theft charge after Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office deputies said he stole $5,382 from a detainee who was in the process of being deported. The detainee discovered the money missing while staff were preparing his deportation paperwork, and surveillance footage reportedly showed Torres placing the cash in a log book without recording it, concealing it in his jacket, hiding in an employee bathroom, and later moving it to his pants pocket without alerting a supervisor. Torres, who lives in Palmetto Bay, was booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center with bond set at $2,500, and ICE said it takes allegations of misconduct seriously and would investigate.