Human Impact Project

Nika, a 32-year-old Iranian woman who fled Iran after protesting the regime and losing friends in the government's crackdown, had been granted 'withholding of removal' by a US immigration judge to prevent her return to Iran. She was released from ICE custody on May 28, 2026, but days later was re-arrested during what officers called a routine check-in in California. She was handcuffed, shackled, and placed on a deportation flight with 17 other migrants to the Central African Republic, a country she said she had never heard of or visited. Since arriving in Bangui, she has largely stayed indoors out of fear, been stopped by local police demanding bribes, and was hospitalized after contracting malaria. Her immigration lawyer is now filing a federal lawsuit seeking to bring her back to the US and reopen her asylum claim.

Teresa Ochoa was detained by ICE agents at her workplace in Alamo, Texas, and, according to a local advocate, was deported shortly afterward. Her 17-year-old son, Luis Ochoa, a U.S. citizen, had been arrested by immigration agents days earlier after witnessing an apprehension near a Marine Corps recruiting office; he said agents offered him money to stay silent and threatened to detain his undocumented relatives if he kept speaking publicly. Advocacy groups We the People RGV and Carnalismo Brown Berets are calling for a congressional hearing and independent investigation into the family's case. DHS did not address questions about Teresa's detention or the alleged threats against Luis.

Three undocumented brothers from Honduras who shared an apartment in New Bedford were detained by ICE agents in the parking lot of a Market Basket while doing their family's weekly grocery run. Their sister-in-law, Maria, said federal vehicles surrounded the men as they arrived, and agents were 'pretty aggressive' toward the brother who was driving, twisting his arm behind his back. The family says none of the three, who worked in construction and as laborers, have criminal records, and one had lived in the U.S. for 14 years. Their elderly mother has been especially distressed, with Maria describing the brothers as 'hardworking and very kind' people who doted on their baby niece.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested four people during a targeted enforcement operation in Moab, Utah. ICE said two were Mexican nationals with final removal orders or prior voluntary departures who had re-entered the country, while the other two were Turkish nationals described as being in the country without authorization, with no further details provided on their cases. ICE did not disclose where the four are being held, which part of the agency conducted the operation, or whether any had criminal convictions. Grand County Sheriff Jamison Wiggins said he was not notified in advance, and both his office and Moab Police said they did not assist with or participate in the operation, though officers did respond to a 911 call during a traffic stop where an ICE arrest occurred. The Moab Valley Multicultural Center activated its emergency protocol, offering free rides and information to residents concerned about the ICE presence, and confirmed ICE left the county alongside the Grand County Sheriff's Office, though it could not independently verify how many people were taken.

More than a dozen people were booked into the Burleigh Morton Detention Center after ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents carried out enforcement activity in the Bismarck-Mandan area beginning Sept. 21. Of the 13 individuals, ranging in age from 19 to 58, nine had addresses in Bismarck, one had an address in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and three had unknown or unlisted addresses. The Burleigh County Sheriff's Department said it was contacted by HSI ahead of the operation and assigned a liaison, while local Bismarck police said they were not asked to assist.

Miguel Ixcuna, 30, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala about 12 years ago, was pulled from his car by ICE agents while driving home with his partner, Antonia Lucas, and their two daughters, ages 3 and 9. Agents blocked the vehicle front and back, took his identification, then removed him from the driver's seat without much explanation while his daughters watched, frightened. He worked as a fruit and vegetable packer in Plymouth and had no criminal record; he is now held at the Burlington ICE Processing Center, where an attorney has filed a habeas petition seeking his release, and he has told his partner he is worried about his daughters and family.

At least two dozen immigrants were detained by ICE agents in roadside stops and workplace encounters across New Bedford, Dartmouth, and Fall River, Massachusetts over Monday and Tuesday, according to immigrant advocacy groups. Advocates said people were picked up while getting gas, buying sandwiches at Market Basket, dropping off spouses at work, and at a Dartmouth Mall restaurant, with most of those detained from Ecuador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Gov. Maura Healey said many of those arrested had lived in the state for years with families, including a father with several children at home, including a 1-month-old baby, and an 8-year-old boy left waiting at school when his father was detained; New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said at least eight of those detained had no criminal records beyond minor motor vehicle violations, and attorneys with the Habeas Project have filed petitions to contest the detentions and prevent transfers out of state.

Jorge (a pseudonym), a Guatemalan man who fled gang extortion threats and joined family in San Diego, was arrested by ICE during a raid on his construction worksite after working there for five months. He spent three months in detention, much of it in frigid holding cells where he slept on bare concrete with only a foil sheet, and developed bronchitis after officers allegedly made cells colder in retaliation for complaints; staff denied him hospital care. He said he signed English-language deportation papers he could not read after being threatened with years in federal detention, later learning the signing carried a 10-year reentry bar, and described being shackled during his deportation flight to Guatemala.

Leonardo 'Leo' Garcia Venegas, a 25-year-old U.S.-born citizen of Mexican descent working construction in Baldwin County, Alabama, was detained by immigration agents multiple times beginning in May 2025 despite presenting a valid Alabama REAL ID. In the first incident, armed agents raided a Foley construction site, tackled his undocumented brother, and held Garcia Venegas handcuffed for over an hour after he began filming and asserted his citizenship; his brother was later deported. Weeks later, agents detained him again at another job site, again dismissing his ID as fake despite him also providing his Social Security card. In a third encounter, officers followed him home, pulled him from his vehicle, tackled him, and shackled him. Never charged with a crime, Garcia Venegas testified before Congress saying 'I don't feel free,' and filed a federal lawsuit with the Institute for Justice against DHS officials, including Tom Homan and Kristi Noem, alleging Fourth Amendment violations, assault, battery, and false arrest. A federal judge in the Southern District of Alabama denied the government's motion to dismiss and temporarily halted warrantless construction-site raids, a ruling Garcia Venegas called 'a huge blow to lawless enforcement practices.'

A Senegalese woman deported to Ghana under a third-country removal arrangement was sent, along with other detainees, to a remote military camp with little electricity or outside contact after Ghanaian officials reacted angrily to viral video of another deportee being forcibly removed. Fearing she would be returned to Senegal, she attempted suicide by drinking bleach and was hospitalized before being deported back to Senegal anyway.

Gisèle, who fled fighting between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, was deported by US authorities to Cameroon under a third-country removal agreement. Suffering from a thyroid condition, she was never able to obtain her medication at the Yaoundé migrant shelter despite repeated requests, and after five months there she abandoned plans to seek asylum in Cameroon and agreed to be sent back to the DR Congo out of concern her health would worsen.

Isatou, a pseudonym for a woman from Guinea who migrated to the U.S. to escape a forced marriage, was removed to Ghana as a third-country destination and subsequently sent back to Guinea, her country of origin. Months after her removal, she said she has had to hide out of fear of encountering her family. "I don’t go out anymore, I’m scared of coming across my family," she said. "They ruined my life."

A crowd gathered at the scene of the ICE shooting in Austin throughout the afternoon, and officers fired pepper ball-like projectiles at the crowd after some demonstrators threw rocks and water bottles at law enforcement while people were leaving the area. A 14-year-old boy was among those affected by the chemical agent, according to his father, who spoke to Austin police. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson called for an independent investigation into the earlier shooting, citing the chaos it caused in the city.

Javier Rueda, a Venezuelan immigrant, has been held in ICE custody in Oklahoma for approximately seven months. His family says an immigration judge approved his asylum request after a nine-hour hearing, but the government has appealed the decision, keeping him detained. A bond of $20,000 has been set, and his family is seeking donations to pay it within a required deadline, warning that without the funds he could remain detained for several more months awaiting the appeal.

Ahmed Soliman, a gay man in his early 30s who fled Egypt as a child and grew up in Phoenix and Tucson, had won a judge's ruling protecting him from deportation to Egypt over fears of persecution based on his sexuality and family history. Despite this ruling and a pending habeas petition, ICE transferred him from Arizona to Louisiana and deported him in April 2026 to a decommissioned hotel in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, under a $7.5 million third-country removal deal that has sent at least 66 people there since November 2025. After guards confiscated detainees' phones, police pointed rifles at Soliman and forced him to his knees when he tried to film officers and the forced removal of other detainees to Ethiopia. Amnesty International reported he was bound and beaten by police upon arrival. After speaking to journalists, including the American Prospect, about conditions at the facility, he was arrested on accusations of damaging property, then blindfolded, beaten, and pushed down a staircase before being transferred to a prison in Malabo. He and another detainee from Eritrea have since been missing for more than a week, with his attorneys unable to confirm charges against him or his location and fearing for his life, believing the arrest was retaliation for speaking to the media.

More than 40 construction workers, mostly Latino nationals from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and other countries, were detained beginning September 2 while working on an $880 million expansion at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pennsylvania, with additional arrests the following week. The workers were employed by contractors Whiting-Turner and EwingCole. Witnesses and advocacy groups, including the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition and Centre County Rapid Response Network, described drones monitoring the site for weeks, unmarked SUVs circling the area, and vehicle stops conducted by ICE agents and local police departments participating in the 287(g) program. Accounts of the scale of the operation varied widely: advocates said nearly 50 workers were detained in total, some held at Clinton County Jail, while ICE and local officials said only about 10 people were arrested, on charges of illegal reentry after prior deportation. Local police chiefs gave conflicting statements about how many people their officers helped turn over to ICE. Geisinger said the enforcement activity did not occur on its property, and one worker described the operation as a 'manhunt,' saying coworkers are now afraid to return to work.

Yasmani Noel Moreno de Armas, a 31-year-old Cuban whose parents live in Hialeah, was detained without explanation by ICE officers on May 11, 2025 while spending the day in West Palm Beach, Florida. He believed he would be deported to Cuba but only learned he was headed to Africa more than two hours into a 22-hour flight that landed in Bangui, Central African Republic, on August 1. He is now confined at the Maison Confort lodging in Bangui alongside migrants from Afghanistan, Vietnam and Russia, suffering stomach problems and allergies without identification documents or legal status. He pays hotel security guards two or three dollars to leave the building, and local police have told him and others they can no longer walk the streets. A representative of the Cuban embassy told him Cuba would not take him back because he left the country as a 'rafter' migrant. 'They brought us here illegally,' he said; his parents 'went crazy, crying and yelling' when he called to tell them where he was.

Roberto Mosquera del Peral, a 59-year-old Cuban immigrant who arrived in the U.S. as a child during the 1980 Mariel boatlift and worked as a plumber while raising four daughters, was detained by ICE at a routine immigration appointment and held at the Krome detention center in Florida. He was later flown from Texas and deported without his consent to Eswatini in southern Africa under the Trump administration's third-country deportation program, since Cuba has refused to accept his return for nearly three decades. He has been held in a maximum-security cell at Matsapha Correctional Complex without being charged with any offense or given access to legal counsel. His lawyer said he staged a 30-day hunger strike, at one point raising serious health concerns, to win small concessions such as wearing his own clothes and having a cellphone to speak with family. Civic groups in Eswatini have filed court cases challenging the legality of detaining him and other deportees without charge.

Jose Gregorio "Grego" Pena Pacheco, a 51-year-old Venezuelan man living in Davenport, Florida, was detained by ICE on September 17, 2026 while driving a short distance from his home to take out the trash, still in his pajamas without shoes. He has a pending asylum case, is authorized to work in the U.S., and has no known criminal history, but has a chronic illness requiring daily medication that he did not have with him at the time of detention. His sister Eliana received one brief call from him on September 18 during which he could not identify his location, and family and friends have since been unable to confirm his whereabouts or whether he received his medication. He reportedly told his sister he was given three documents in English, a language he does not speak fluently, asking him to choose between leaving the U.S., paying for release, or remaining detained while fighting his case. His family has retained an immigration attorney and is asking the community for help locating him and information about his case.

Leonardo Sánchez, a Cuban migrant with a large abdominal hernia and a pending operation, was deported to Equatorial Guinea and is being held at the Hotel Bamy in Malabo. His mother, Caridad, said from Miami that she has not heard from him in a week because authorities took away detainees' phones to prevent them from speaking with the press. "What they're doing is criminal; the treatment is unfair," she said.