Human Impact Project

LA County Department of Animal Care and Control has taken in 28 animals from deported or detained families since June 2025, with pet surrenders nearly doubling after a series of summer raids. Children have come to the Carson Animal Care Center for painful goodbyes with family pets including Coco, a pug-beagle mix, and Bruce, a Labrador mix, after their families were ordered to leave the country.

Jorge Willy Valera Chuquillanqui, a Peruvian asylum seeker with no criminal history, was arrested by DHS agents minutes after completing routine immigration court proceedings on July 25, 2025. He had been living in the U.S. since December 2022 after being released on bond. The federal court granted a preliminary injunction ordering his release and prohibiting re-detention without a hearing before a neutral decisionmaker. The court found that ICE violated his due process rights by detaining him without proper procedural safeguards.

A human smuggler guided a group of undocumented migrants through the Arizona desert in extreme heat and allegedly instructed them to abandon one member who became dizzy and fell into a ravine, resulting in death. U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended the smuggler, Miguel Salomon-Lugo, on June 21.

A Nicaraguan-born superintendent of Winooski schools, a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2018, was detained for nearly five hours at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport while returning from visiting family in Nicaragua with his U.S.-born husband. Agents questioned him about his citizenship, marriage and profession, and pressed him for passwords to his personal and district-issued devices; his husband was not told where he was being held or for how long. After the devices were searched, he was released, and his Global Entry membership was later revoked without explanation. Vermont leaders and advocacy groups are now calling for an investigation into the incident, which follows other recent detentions of immigrants in the state.

Jefersson Bladimir Alemán Beltrán, 19, was taken into ICE custody outside a Santa Maria jail on July 24, after being arrested July 21 on suspicion of inappropriate sexual conduct and having the charges dismissed by a judge for lack of evidence. His mother, Alba Beltrán, says masked agents arrived in several unmarked vehicles and beat her son after he declined to answer questions about his immigration status and asked for a lawyer. Beltrán, who is herself undocumented, says she hid on the floor of her car out of fear while watching the arrest, and alleges the sheriff's office tipped off ICE ahead of her son's release, a possible violation of California's sanctuary law. Jefersson, who entered the U.S. in 2019 at age 14 as an unaccompanied minor, graduated from Santa Maria High School, and works picking strawberries alongside his mother, remains held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, where support workers say he has shown bruising, a swollen neck, and back pain; his mother says the accusation against him arose from a dispute over a romantic relationship.

Rutilio Zelaya Franco, a fencing industry worker who had lived in the country for 14 years without prior police trouble, was driving a delivery truck when he was pursued by ICE agents. During the chase, his truck crashed into a home; he fled on foot and turned himself in at the Loudoun County Courthouse two days later on July 24. After a judge released him on bail, Loudoun County Sheriff's Office deputies presented him with an ICE warrant, handcuffed him, and escorted him to waiting ICE agents. He is married with two children. Zelaya Franco is being held at a detention center in Cibola County, New Mexico, pending removal proceedings.

Animal shelters across Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties are seeing a rise in pets surrendered due to immigration enforcement. Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control has received at least 19 pets this year as a direct result of immigration arrests, including an 11-year-old poodle who is sick and partially blind. Rescue organizations have taken in animals like Mud, a terrier mix found starving in a locked backyard weeks after a family was deported, as well as Nino, a dog returned to the shelter he was adopted from two years earlier, and Bruce, a pit bull mix left behind when his family was forced to leave. The Doral shelter has been operating at nearly double its designed capacity, and groups like Good Karma Pet Rescue and Lady Luck Animal Rescue say they have limited resources to keep up with demand.

Sarah Shaw, a New Zealand woman living in Washington State, and her 6-year-old son Isaac were detained by US immigration at the Canada-US border on July 24 after attempting to return home from dropping off her other children in Vancouver. Shaw held a temporary immigration document allowing her to travel and re-enter the US. Officials identified an administrative error with her paperwork. The pair were transferred to the Dilley Immigration Processing Centre in Texas, where they are being held. They do not have access to their personal belongings.

Janeth Jazmin Jaldin Loza, an Alpine resident, was arrested by ICE agents on July 23. Reporters were unable to find any record of past convictions or pending charges against her in Wyoming court records.

Juan Barranco Castro, 56, a Jackson, Wyoming resident of 26 years, was arrested by ICE agents in the parking lot of Community Bible Church as he drove to work during a multiday immigration operation in July 2025. Friends said agents had been searching for another person who drove a similar vehicle and detained Castro by mistake. He was handcuffed, placed in leg irons and belly chains, and taken to the Sweetwater County Detention Center in Rock Springs before being transferred to a federal facility elsewhere. Court documents show no criminal convictions or pending charges against Castro. The operation detained at least nine people across Teton County, and Jackson restaurant workers and community members organized in response to his arrest.

K.N., a minor U.S. citizen, was arrested along with his sisters while approaching a construction site raid. Federal agents drove K.N. to his mother's home and held him outside the fence while asking him if his mother was "illegal," then threatened to take him into federal custody while demanding his mother produce identification. According to MALDEF's Federal Tort Claims Act claim, agents used K.N. as "bait" in an attempt to lure his mother, a lawful permanent resident, into the street to investigate her immigration status. MALDEF seeks $2.5 million in damages for personal injury and emotional distress.

Sorayda Noyola, 31, and her siblings Claudia, 19, and a third sibling were arrested by ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents during a construction site raid near their mother's home in Texas. Sorayda was documenting the raid when an agent grabbed her arm and attempted to seize her cell phone; when she objected, agents tackled all three siblings to the ground, handcuffed them, and arrested them. Sorayda and Claudia were detained for hours at the ICE Field Office in Harlingen, and agents confiscated both of their phones without returning them. MALDEF filed a Federal Tort Claims Act administrative claim seeking $2.5 million in damages for personal injury and $2,000 for the lost phone for each sibling, alleging unlawful assault, arrest, and detention in violation of their constitutional rights.

Z.G., a citizen of Ethiopia, was arrested by immigration authorities on July 22, 2025, and held in immigration detention for nine months without a bond hearing pending removal proceedings. The petitioner filed a habeas corpus petition claiming his prolonged detention violated due process. The federal court granted the petition and ordered immigration authorities to provide a bond hearing within 14 days.

A federal judge in St. Paul placed U.S. Army veteran Ian Davis Austin on probation with restricted travel to Pennsylvania and Minnesota, a mental health assessment, and suspended firearm access, citing his conduct at ICE detention facility protests. Austin has been arrested four times since beginning protests against Operation Metro Surge, including twice during a hunger strike outside the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. He is among 40 people charged under the FACE Act following a January 18 protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, a group that also includes journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon. Activists outside the courthouse argued the ruling penalizes veterans for seeking treatment related to military trauma.

Alberto Banicescu, a 27-year-old Romanian national, was taken into custody outside his Jackson apartment on July 21. ICE agents detained him based on assumptions about international travel patterns between Mexico City and Romania. He had a misdemeanor DUI citation from January and was on probation. He was placed in belly chains and leg irons before transport to Sweetwater County Detention Center.

Tae Heung "Will" Kim, a 40-year-old Korean American legal permanent resident and Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M University studying infectious disease, was detained by CBP at San Francisco Airport upon returning from his brother's wedding in South Korea. He was held at the airport for more than a week without access to legal counsel, sleeping on a chair with lights on 24 hours, and denied contact with the outside world. Kim was subsequently transferred to ICE detention facilities in Arizona and Texas. His attorney states the cited reason for arrest was a 2011 marijuana possession conviction, though Kim had completed community service and had the record sealed; the government used it anyway. He faces a September 4 deportation hearing.

A Human Rights Watch report released on July 21, 2025, documents severe conditions at three Florida immigration detention facilities—Krome North Service Processing Center, Broward Transitional Center, and Federal Detention Center Miami—between January and June 2025. The report profiles 11 detained immigrants and includes interviews with family members and lawyers. Detainees experienced overcrowding (Krome reached 249% capacity by March), denial of critical medications including insulin and inhalers, forced sleep on cold concrete floors, degrading treatment including forced eating without hands, and excessive force including stun grenade deployment during protests. Substandard medical care is alleged to have been linked to two deaths. The detention population surge followed Trump administration executive orders establishing prolonged detention policies, with overall U.S. immigration detention reaching 56,000 people daily by June 2025, the highest level in U.S. history.

A 5-year-old girl identified as a U.S. citizen was taken into ICE custody along with her mother after Austin police responded to a disturbance call and identified the mother with an ICE administrative warrant. The family has been unable to locate the child in government databases and is seeking custody arrangements so she can stay with relatives while her mother remains detained.

On July 21, 2025, Dan Mathers of Key West was arrested by a Customs and Border Protection agent while filming the agent detaining a Haitian immigrant on Eaton Street. Mathers was accused of threatening the agent and held for 8 hours at a facility in Marathon before being released. The Haitian immigrant was also later released. Mathers was unable to contact his family until approximately 9:15pm.

An 82-year-old man from Pennsylvania was deported to Guatemala after being apprehended during a visit to an ICE office to replace his lost green card. He had lived in the U.S. for nearly 40 years and was granted political asylum in 1987. His family initially could not locate him and later learned he was in a hospital in Guatemala. Guatemala has an agreement with the Trump administration to receive deported immigrants of other nationalities.