Human Impact Project

Federal ICE agents raided Nutrition Bar Confectioners, a family-owned nutrition bar manufacturer in Cato, New York, on September 4, 2025, detaining 57 workers. The raid separated nursing mothers from infants under one year old and affected elementary school-aged children whose parents were detained. Five of the 57 detainees were criminally charged with unauthorized re-entry after prior deportation, while the remaining 52 faced deportation proceedings. Governor Kathy Hochul visited the facility and expressed concern that detaining parents put at least a dozen children at risk of returning from school to an empty house.

Three individuals—an immigrant detained by ICE in the Northern District of California, a second immigrant detained by ICE in the same district, and a third immigrant detained by ICE in the same district—were detained by ICE in the Northern District of California. The court granted a preliminary injunction on November 5, 2025, prohibiting respondents from detaining the petitioners without a pre-detention hearing before a neutral decisionmaker and preventing their transfer out of the district without court approval. The court found the petitioners raised serious legal questions regarding the legality of their detention under the circumstances presented.

Darian Maldonado Medina, a Venezuelan with Temporary Protected Status, was detained by ICE during a routine check-in in Tampa on September 5, 2025, and deported to Venezuela three weeks later. He had valid TPS status at the time of detention, a pending family petition through his U.S. citizen mother, and a 15-month-old U.S. citizen son and partner remaining in Florida. A federal court order had extended TPS protections prior to his deportation. Lawyers have argued that the deportation violated federal law and court orders.

On September 4, 2025, 14 people were deported from U.S. detention to Ghana on military aircraft as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign to African countries. Four detainees were placed in straitjackets when they refused to board without speaking to their lawyers. The group landed in Accra after 16 hours with no explanation provided and no documentation given. According to lawyers, the actual group consisted of 11 detainees (four Nigerians, three Togolese, two Malians, one Liberian, and one Gambian), who were held at Bundase Military Camp with irregular food and water supply. On September 23, eight were deported by Ghana to Togo and given approximately $100 each, with two reportedly taken to Mali and one remaining in Ghana.

K.S., a Gambian citizen and LGBTQ+ community member who had obtained humanitarian parole to remain in the U.S., was removed from a Louisiana detention center without explanation on September 4, 2025, chained and placed on a military aircraft. He was deported to Ghana as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign to African countries. K.S. had fled Gambia where LGBTQ+ status is punishable by up to life in prison, and expressed his fear of returning to his homeland to Ghanaian officials, but immigration authorities proceeded with the deportation anyway. He is currently in hiding.

A California State University Channel Islands professor was charged with throwing a tear gas canister during an incident. In a separate immigration enforcement action in Southern California, a legal green card holder who was working toward U.S. citizenship was detained by ICE. The woman's husband expressed concern following her detention.

New Jersey's attorney general is investigating claims by the activist group Project NINJA that ICE used a Roxbury warehouse to detain and transfer immigrants, violating a federal court order that barred such use pending environmental review. The group provided photos and video showing ICE vehicles from a September 4 arrest in Dover entering and exiting the facility. The warehouse, purchased by DHS for nearly $130 million to become a 1,500-person detention center, has drawn bipartisan opposition.

Iara do Carmo Santana, a 29-year-old Brazilian woman recovering from a miscarriage, surgery and subsequent infection, was arrested by Malden police after her fiancé called 911 out of concern for her mental health. After being released from police custody, she was detained by ICE agents who were waiting outside and taken to an ICE field office in Burlington, where she said she was denied a medical assessment, a Portuguese interpreter, and consistent antibiotics and pain medication for roughly four days. Her lawyers filed a habeas petition alleging ICE violated her due process rights given her recent surgery, and U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin ordered her release, calling the lack of medical care 'a serious issue' and the Burlington facility's use for extended detention 'troubling as a systemic matter.' Santana had applied for asylum and held employment authorization working as a house cleaner; she is engaged to a lawful permanent resident and has since been reunited with him and her six-year-old son, though her criminal case remains pending and she still faces possible deportation.

More than 300 South Korean workers who were among 475 people detained in a September 4, 2025 immigration raid at the Hyundai-LG battery plant in Ellabell, Georgia are filing administrative claims against nine federal agencies, the first step toward a federal lawsuit. Workers, including a lead organizer identified only as Kim, allege they were shackled, denied interpreters, pressured to sign documents they could not read, and held for about a week in overcrowded, cold cells with limited food and sanitation at a detention facility in Folkston, Georgia. One worker, Ryu, said he lost nearly 10 pounds in custody, while another, Choi, said he has since returned to work at the same plant but wants a government apology. The lawyer representing the claimants said the raid, which targeted only four named individuals per a search warrant, wrongly swept up hundreds of workers who had valid visas or business travel status.

M., who prefers to use only her first initial, was forcibly separated from her two-year-old U.S.-citizen child during a raid at the Nutrition Bar Confectioners factory. Despite showing agents her work permit, Social Security documentation, and evidence of a pending asylum appeal, she was sent to a detention facility in Texas and then deported to Guatemala. She is now a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the ICE and CBP agents involved in the raid.

Eddie, a worker at the Nutrition Bar Confectioners factory who had lived in the U.S. for twenty years and held a work permit, was arrested during a federal raid and deported to Guatemala within 72 hours. His wife is now struggling to care for their two boys alone while working overtime and coping with depression over the sudden separation. He is a plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to allow him to return to the U.S. and reunite with his family.

Pedro Rojas, a U.S. citizen born in Puerto Rico, was working at the Nutrition Bar Confectioners factory when armed federal agents raided the site. After identifying himself as a citizen, he was still required to show ID and give his contact information before he was allowed to leave. Rojas is now a plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging the raid targeted Latinx workers based on ethnicity, saying "once they hear you speaking Spanish, they're discriminating against you and mistreating you."

On September 4, 2025, roughly 60 armed and masked federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations, ICE, CBP and local sheriff's offices raided the Nutrition Bar Confectioners plant in Cato, New York. Officers broke down a locked bathroom door on female employees, herded over 100 workers into a break room, and separated them by citizenship status without individualized suspicion, questioning pregnant employees and parents worried about children waiting at home. At least 57 workers were arrested, more than 20 were separated from their children, and some were denied access to attorneys or family before being sent to out-of-state detention facilities. Pedro Rojas, a U.S. citizen who was seized and interrogated, said agents targeted him and his coworkers because they are Latino. Only five of those arrested faced criminal charges, the most serious being unlawful reentry, and two plaintiffs were deported, though one has since been allowed to reenter the country. The NYCLU and the Worker Justice Center of New York filed a class action lawsuit against DHS alleging officers exceeded their search warrants and violated workers' Fourth Amendment rights.

Federal agents raided the Hyundai Motor Group electric vehicle megasite in Bryan County, Georgia, arresting about 475 workers in what Homeland Security Investigations called the largest single-site immigration enforcement action in its history. Search warrants indicated investigators were probing a conspiracy to harbor undocumented workers and other illegal employment practices, and agents seized employment verification documents, computers, and storage drives. About 300 of those detained were South Korean nationals, and the South Korean government negotiated their return home, while other workers were processed through the immigration system without diplomatic intervention. One year later, the Department of Justice confirmed no criminal charges have been filed and the federal court case is closed, with no consequences for the companies that hired the workers.

A 24-year-old Guatemalan man who had become a legal U.S. resident two years earlier was briefly detained, photographed, and released after about 11 hours during an ICE raid at Nutrition Bar Confectioners in Cato, New York. His partner, who lacked legal immigration status, was taken away by agents before he could speak to her, and he did not know where she had been detained. The worker, who has been supporting his parents and siblings in Guatemala, said he planned to return to work despite the disruption.

Y.A. fled Somalia after being subjected to female genital mutilation and narrowly escaping forced marriage and attempted rape. After entering the U.S. in October 2024, she applied for asylum. On September 4, 2025, an immigration judge pretermitted her applications and ordered her removed to Honduras or Uganda under Asylum Cooperative Agreements. She remains detained with her appeal pending, fearing severe harm in both countries as a Black, Muslim woman.

ICE officers arrested Helda Araceli Mendez-Merida, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, during a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Indianapolis on September 3. DHS said Mendez-Merida had voted unlawfully in a past national election. She entered the United States through Arizona in September 2015, was apprehended by Border Patrol, and was released into the country under the Obama Administration; a DOJ immigration judge issued her a final order of removal on September 3, 2019.

A Valley family and their attorney claim that Immigration and Customs Enforcement should release their relative while his legal status is clarified. The man was granted a special cancellation of removal in Phoenix in 2022, but the case was never finalized and remains pending. He was recently detained for new removal proceedings, and his attorney argues his status should have been protected since the last court hearing three years ago.

A couple expecting their third child is facing deportation. Their two other children, including a 5-month-old, have been placed with family members. LULAC has found legal representation and is seeking financial assistance to help care for their U.S. citizen children.

ICE agents, assisted by Mahoning Township Police, conducted a raid at a Geisinger construction project on September 2, detaining 10 people. Mahoning Township Police Chief Fred Dyroff addressed a township supervisors' meeting attended by more than 35 residents, clarifying that 10 people were detained rather than the rumored 40. Dyroff said his department is required to cooperate with federal officials when called upon for assistance.