Human Impact Project

Manuela Hernandez, an asylum seeker from Colombia, was detained at California City's detention center for five months after her electronic monitoring device broke during a household accident in December 2025. She reported severe medical decline in custody, including fainting spells and a bacterial infection, while ICE pursued federal charges for property destruction. After her legal team filed a habeas corpus petition arguing the break was unintentional, she was released on May 4, 2026, and has reunited with her family while continuing her asylum case.

Diana Marquez Ruiz initially planned to self-deport with her two children on May 4, 2026, after her husband was removed from Aurora detention center. However, on the drive to the ICE field office, she became emotional and decided to turn back, unable to abandon her family dog in the United States. She and Cecilia had lived together and supported each other after their husbands' arrests.

Federal Magistrate Judge Joel Richlin ordered the release of Darwin Ortega Montufar from ICE custody on April 24, 2026, finding his arrest and detention violated his constitutional due process rights. Montufar was arrested on April 4 while going to work in Riverside County, held incommunicado for three days, and denied a bond hearing despite being compliant with ICE reporting obligations and having no criminal record.

Federal Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents, assisted by Texas Department of Public Safety, conducted an operation at a residence on Smith Avenue in a central Laredo neighborhood. Over 20 undocumented people were removed from the home. The condition of those found inside remained unknown.

Hana Francis, 26, was arrested at a sit-in demonstration in a hotel lobby on Southwest 2nd Avenue in Portland during May Day protests. She was charged with second-degree criminal trespass.

ICE Seattle took six people into custody who have serious criminal histories and are in the country without authorization, pending their removal. Those arrested include Miguel Salamanca-Alverez from Mexico with a felony conviction for five counts of assault; Angel Negrete-Villalobos with a felony conviction for first-degree assault and protective order violations; Alfredo Gallegos-Guillen with a history of assault arrests; Karla Daniela Gallegos-Holguin with a 2025 felony conviction for bringing methamphetamine into the country; and Bounlay Siackasorn from Laos with felony convictions for dealing meth, burglary, and theft.

A father named Marcus and his daughter are seeking community support and fundraising assistance following ICE enforcement activity under Operation Metro Surge. The family appears to be displaced and living in a campsite, with urgent appeals for donations to prevent the father's deportation.

Axel Gerardo Archaga Rios, an 18-year-old junior at Dunwoody High School who arrived in the U.S. at age 4 with his mother seeking asylum, was arrested by Dunwoody Police on March 27, 2026, for running a stop sign and driving without a valid license. He was booked into DeKalb County Jail under the 287(g) program, posted bond, and was released into ICE custody on March 29. Rios was transferred to Folkston ICE Processing Center near Brunswick, Georgia. His attorney filed a stay of removal and a motion to reopen his 2015 removal order to pursue asylum relief, but both requests were denied. Rios was deported to Honduras, where he subsequently adjusted to life with his grandmother.

A woman detained at Adelanto ICE Processing Center filed a pro se habeas corpus petition and emergency motion to prevent her removal from the United States. The federal court granted a temporary restraining order enjoining ICE from transferring or removing her from the Central District of California pending a preliminary injunction hearing. The court ordered ICE to ensure her appearance at the May 8, 2026 hearing.

Thousands of Portlanders took part in peaceful May Day demonstrations on May 2, 2026, marking International Workers' Day and linking labor rights with immigrant rights. By evening, hundreds marched to the ICE facility in South Portland, where five people were arrested after police said protesters threw rocks and water bottles at officers; one officer was hospitalized after being struck by a large rock, and another was treated at the scene. Seven additional arrests were made during a hotel sit-in on Southwest 2nd Avenue. The march came two days after a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel stayed earlier federal court orders limiting agents' use of crowd control munitions, and police said the Portland Police Bureau has made 94 arrests tied to ICE protest activity since June 2025.

Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian citizen, Fulbright scholar, and Columbia doctoral student in urban planning, had her visa revoked by DHS without explanation. ICE agents visited her building three times, twice without a warrant. She fled to the United States and remains in Canada.

Juan Gaspar, from a village near Quetzaltenango, was deported and signed a voluntary departure agreement. He reported that officers only collected a phone number but he received no message with stipend collection details a week after his expulsion.

Several hundred protesters gathered at Portland's ICE facility on May Day, with some marching onto the facility's driveway and rattling its gate before Portland police and Oregon State Police moved in to clear the area and make arrests. Officers said protesters threw rocks and water bottles, injuring an officer, while ICE agents remained inside the building throughout the confrontation. Police had made arrests earlier in the day, including nine people during a hotel sit-in demonstration, with additional arrests made near the ICE facility as the evening protest intensified. A police spokesperson said officers' intervention was prompted when demonstration activity "turned criminal."

A detained immigrant identified as Han filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus seeking immediate release and asking the court to prohibit his transfer or deportation without a hearing before a neutral decisionmaker. On May 1, 2026, the court issued a temporary order barring the government from deporting him until it rules on his custody status. A hearing was scheduled for May 4, 2026, and the government was ordered to respond by May 1, 2026.

A noncitizen is detained at ICE's Denver Contract Detention Facility despite an immigration judge ordering his release on an $8,000 bond. ICE invoked an automatic stay regulation to prevent his release while appealing the bond determination. The immigration judge later reconsidered and held that the petitioner's detention is mandatory under federal law.

A noncitizen from Cameroon who entered the U.S. in 2024 was granted withholding of removal to Cameroon on September 16, 2025. Despite this protection from deportation to his home country, he remained detained at the Adelanto Detention Facility for more than six months after his removal order became final. The court ordered his release within 24 hours, finding his continued detention violated due process since removal was not reasonably foreseeable.

Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, a 27-year-old Cuban national, was found dead by apparent suicide, hanging from a bedsheet in his cell at the Miami Federal Detention Center. He had entered the U.S. legally in October 2024 under parole and was later arrested in Miami-Dade County in November 2025 on a charge of resisting an officer with violence, which prosecutors later dropped. He was transferred to ICE custody on February 11, 2026, held under a deportation order, and had been diagnosed with anxiety and prescribed medication the prior month, though he reportedly denied suicidal thoughts. His family launched a fundraising campaign to raise $3,000 to cremate his body and send his ashes to his parents in Cuba, who are unable to travel to the United States. His death marked the second reported suicide in Florida ICE custody within a month, and one of at least nine to ten suicides reported among men in ICE custody, and at least 49 to 51 deaths overall, since January 2025.

Juanita Avila, a 47-year-old Guatemalan-born legal permanent resident and shop owner in Cottage Grove, Oregon, was detained by ICE agents on November 5, 2025, while driving on Highway 99, despite carrying her valid green card. Avila alleges agents racially profiled her and used excessive force, dragging her from her vehicle and pinning her to the pavement without showing a warrant or establishing probable cause. Video of the arrest, captured by her daughter, became evidence in a lawsuit challenging ICE's 'arrest first, justify later' tactics. In May 2026, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking ICE from conducting warrantless arrests in Oregon, calling the agency's conduct 'brutal and violent' and a systematic violation of constitutional rights.

Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 18-year-old Milford High School student who came to the U.S. from Brazil at age 7, was detained by ICE agents in May 2025 while driving his father's car to volleyball practice. His student visa, obtained in 2012, had lapsed, and he intended to apply for asylum. His attorney filed a habeas corpus petition, and a federal judge ordered he not be moved out of state for 72 hours. He was held in a Burlington ICE facility under poor conditions, including sleeping on concrete floors without beds or windows. After being released on bond, he remained in legal limbo for months before receiving his high school diploma in May 2026. Congressman Seth Moulton invited him to attend the State of the Union as a guest, where he planned to advocate for immigrants, and his arrest and resilience were acknowledged during his high school's commencement ceremony.

Deyvi Daniel Corona Sanchez, an undocumented Mexican man who had been deported to Mexico five years earlier following a criminal trespass charge in Texas, was detained by ICE agents on March 11, 2026, during an enforcement operation on Dorset Street in South Burlington, Vermont. When federal officers attempted to stop his vehicle as it left a home, Corona Sanchez rammed a federal agent's car before crashing in a wooded area and running into a nearby house. Hundreds of community members and protesters gathered at the scene in a hours-long standoff to block agents from entering the home. ICE agents forced their way through the crowd and took him into federal custody around 5:30 p.m. Corona Sanchez had been facing a pending driving-under-the-influence charge from January in Middlebury. He missed a May court hearing where he had been offered enrollment in a court diversion program that would have allowed the charge to be expunged. A federal judge previously found that the ICE arrests violated Constitutional rights, though deportation proceedings remain possible.