Human Impact Project

Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, a 22-year-old mother born in Laurel, Maryland, was detained by ICE near her Baltimore home on December 14, 2025. Her attorney described the stop as a 'Kavanaugh Stop,' linking it to a 2023 CBP encounter in Arizona where she was recorded claiming Mexican citizenship. Despite her family and attorneys presenting a Maryland birth certificate, hospital birth records, and fingerprints, DHS maintained she was not a citizen and pursued removal proceedings. A federal judge blocked her deportation days after her arrest, but she remained in custody for 25 days, transferred five times through facilities in Louisiana, Texas, and New Jersey, missing Christmas with her 5-year-old son. She was released on January 7, 2026 with an ankle monitor and reunited with her son. Her attorneys maintained the documentation clearly established her citizenship. On June 17, 2026, DHS dismissed her deportation case after confirming her birth in Maryland, and she obtained a U.S. passport. Her case was cited among more than 500 U.S. citizens reported detained by ICE nationally.

Nayeli, a 25-year-old Honduran woman with a pending asylum case, was arrested by plainclothes ICE agents at the Carroll County District Court in Westminster, Maryland, as she waited to contest theft charges filed by her former employer over a $12.08 McDonald's purchase made accidentally on his company credit card. The agents did not identify themselves, and her mother said they only announced 'ICE, she needs to go with me' before handcuffing Nayeli and taking her away; the judge overseeing the case told Nayeli's attorney 'It's not my hallway' when informed of the arrest. The theft charges, which a prosecutor had already offered to pause, were dismissed because Nayeli could not appear, but she remained in ICE detention in Virginia two weeks later. Nayeli, who is authorized to work in the U.S. and entered the country with her mother in 2019 to pursue asylum, said, 'I'm trying to be as positive as I can, but I mean, of course, this is not my home.'

Julian Curo-Churata, a 47-year-old man from Peru, died in ICE custody on September 29, 2026, pronounced dead at 4:01 a.m. at Ochsner LSU Health Monroe Medical Center in Monroe, Louisiana. He was arrested by ERO Baltimore during a targeted enforcement operation on June 27, 2026, and later transferred to ERO New Orleans custody, where he was held at Richwood Correctional Center. After being found in medical distress, he was taken to the hospital around 8:14 p.m. on September 28; the cause of death has not yet been determined pending an autopsy. An immigration judge had denied his applications for relief and voluntary departure on September 18, 2026, after which he reserved his right to appeal; ICE notified his spouse, attorney, and the Consulate General of Peru, as well as the DHS Office of Inspector General and ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility, following his death.

ICE agents arrested Emilio Osorio-Osorio, a Guatemalan national, in Baltimore. The agency described him as having a criminal history including homicide and assault. Osorio-Osorio will remain in ICE custody while removal proceedings move forward.

Rabbiatu Kuyateh, a 58-year-old nurse who fled Sierra Leone's civil war as a child and spent nearly 30 years in the Washington, D.C. area caring for Covid-19 patients and disabled adults, was detained by ICE during a routine check-in in Baltimore on July 1, 2025, with her son Mohamed Alghali present. Despite holding a U.S. court order of withholding of removal protecting her from being sent to Sierra Leone due to past torture there, her attorney says the government pursued her removal to a third country without a hearing. After four months in custody, she was flown in shackles to Ghana, a country with no ties to her, telling officials, "Ghana? I'm not from Ghana; what am I going to do there?" She was held at a remote military camp alongside other deportees, including a Senegalese man using the pseudonym Malick, who filmed Ghanaian officials forcibly dragging Kuyateh by her hair into a van when she resisted being put on a bus toward Sierra Leone. After the footage spread online, Ghanaian troops arrived at the camp at night with trucks of soldiers. Her son has not seen her since the July check-in and contacted the advocacy group CASA seeking her return; she is reported to be living in hiding at an undisclosed location in Africa. The First Circuit Court of Appeals later ruled such third-country deportations unlawful without advance notice and a chance to challenge the destination.

Daniel was detained by ICE agents while on his way to work in Virginia, then passed through several detention centers where he endured harsh conditions before being deported to Guatemala. His sudden deportation left his wife, Marisol, and their one-year-old daughter, Luna, without their primary source of income and support. Daniel and Luna stay connected through daily video calls, while Marisol raises Luna alone without nearby family or a strong support network, facing financial and emotional hardships.

A man from Pakistan in his early 40s was arrested and initially processed and detained in Baltimore in April 2025 before being transferred to a long-term detention facility in central Pennsylvania, where he stayed nearly three months. Over the following year he was moved 17 more times, three of them back to the same Pennsylvania facility, traveling a total of 11,347 miles before he was conditionally released this summer.

A Latino man identified in court filings as J.M.R. alleges ICE agents pulled him from his car, threw him to the ground and shocked him with a Taser before detaining him. A federal judge later ruled his detention unlawful and ordered his release. He is among the named plaintiffs in a proposed federal class-action lawsuit, Guzmán v. DHS, filed Sept. 9 in U.S. District Court in Maryland challenging alleged warrantless ICE arrests.

Samuel Guzmán, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen born in Maryland who spent part of his childhood in Mexico and lives in Anne Arundel County, was surrounded and handcuffed by masked ICE agents near a 7-Eleven in Annapolis one Sunday in June while driving to his restaurant job. He said he repeatedly told officers he was born in the country, and that one officer asked him, 'If you are an American citizen, why don't you speak better English?' He was held for more than an hour alongside other Latino individuals and said he worried about a co-worker who lived nearby. Guzmán is now the lead plaintiff in a proposed federal class-action lawsuit, Guzmán v. DHS, filed September 9, 2026 in U.S. District Court in Maryland by immigrant rights group CASA. He is joined by three other Maryland residents from Prince George's, Montgomery and Wicomico counties who say they were similarly arrested without warrants or probable cause. The lawsuit alleges ICE adopted an 'arrest first, ask questions later' policy targeting people perceived to be Brown or Black immigrants without individualized assessments, and asks a federal judge to declare such warrantless arrests unconstitutional.

A Maryland man named Aquino, described by his family as the sole provider for his wife and five children, was taken into ICE custody after being pulled over by police for a broken vehicle light. His family says it remains unclear why he was detained or why he continues to be held. Family friend Kristi Voigt said Aquino has lived in the U.S. for 23 years and called him 'a good man.' A GoFundMe launched to cover legal expenses and household costs raised more than $10,000 from 161 donors within three days.

Jose Antonio Caballero-Nolasco, a 32-year-old Salvadoran national living in the U.S. without legal status, was charged with manslaughter and vehicular homicide after allegedly driving drunk the wrong way on the I-270 Spur in Bethesda/Montgomery County, Maryland, causing a head-on collision. The crash killed 46-year-old Musammat Shamima Begum and her 23-year-old daughter Areebah Jahin, and left an 8-year-old girl in their vehicle with life-threatening injuries. Caballero-Nolasco was treated at a hospital before being transferred to the Montgomery County Detention Center, where he is being held without bond. ICE lodged an immigration detainer asking local officials not to release him, though Montgomery County's sanctuary policies and Maryland's Community Trust Act make it unclear whether the detainer will be honored. His attorney said he is a construction worker who has lived in the U.S. for 10 years and is expecting a child with his girlfriend.

Federal ICE agents arrived around 6 a.m. Thursday, September 3, 2025, near Stoneybrook Court and Schaffer Drive in Frederick, Maryland's Taskers Chance neighborhood, searching for a man who had fled a vehicle stop. Agents occupied the area for nearly 40 hours, prompting residents to stay inside and skip work, while observers from the Western Maryland Immigrant Rights Collective monitored the scene. On Friday night, when agents ordered the block cleared, a couple dozen residents and observers linked arms and sat down to block a doorway, chanting 'We shall not be moved.' ICE vehicles drove onto a sidewalk, nearly striking City Council Vice President Katie Nash, and agents used batons, grabbed and pushed people, and dragged protesters off a porch, injuring several, some requiring hospitalization. No arrests were made, and it did not appear anyone inside the targeted home was taken into custody. Frederick police who responded did not assist the federal agents. City Council President César Díaz and Vice President Katie Nash said observers were not violent, with Nash stating, 'It's nuts. Now people are just not leaving their houses.' Frederick Mayor Michael O'Connor, Díaz, and the county executive publicly objected to the tactics, and a local representative called for a full investigation into the agents' use of force.

Nexan Aroldo Asencio Corado, a Guatemalan carpenter and small business owner who had lived in Milford, Massachusetts for about a decade, was arrested by masked ICE agents in his backyard on May 30, 2025, as his young twin sons, Jhon and Damian, watched from a window. His wife, Christina Toledo, a U.S. citizen, said agents told her they were looking for his brother-in-law and dismissed the couple's approved I-130 petition as possibly fake. Toledo said Asencio Corado, who has no criminal record, spent several nights in custody sleeping on a bathroom floor without adequate food or water, and the family was denied bond; relatives launched a GoFundMe to cover legal costs. The twin boys, who have partial hearing loss and speech delays, needed therapy after witnessing the arrest. Asencio Corado was deported to Guatemala months later after his pending application to remain in the country was set aside. In December 2025, Toledo and the boys traveled to his home village near the Salvadoran border to reunite with him before returning to Milford, and Toledo has since relocated to Florida to be near her mother while the family decides whether to move permanently to Guatemala.

A Colombian mother was separated from her two young children during a routine ICE check-in in Baltimore, despite an immigration judge having ruled she would likely face torture or persecution if deported to Colombia. She was transferred to the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona and remained in ICE custody for months afterward. An Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting analysis identified her as one of more than 120 immigrants in Arizona whom ICE continued to detain even after judges had barred their deportation to their home countries due to humanitarian protections.

Yousof (Yousef) Azizi, a 40-year-old Iranian researcher, journalist, and Virginia Tech PhD candidate who had lived legally in the U.S. for 13 years, was arrested outside his Germantown, Maryland home on April 13 shortly after dropping his children at school. More than ten FBI and Homeland Security Investigations vehicles were involved, with agents pointing rifles at him before transferring him to detention facilities, eventually moving him over six days through Louisiana, Arizona, and California, including a stay in a freezing Arizona facility that he said harmed his health. Authorities alleged he lied on his student visa application about past membership in Iran's Student Basij Organization, but he said no evidence was ever presented despite multiple court hearings, and his wife called the visa issue a pretext for targeting his public commentary on U.S.-Iran relations. A judge denied bond despite 250 pages of support letters from professors at Harvard, Virginia Tech, the University of Michigan, and other institutions. Azizi, a regular media commentator critical of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, said an FBI agent twice threatened his wife, and after roughly three months in custody he accepted voluntary return to Iran, where he hopes to defend his dissertation remotely.

L, who came to the U.S. from Honduras in 2012 to escape gun violence, was unexpectedly detained during a routine immigration check-in and later deported to Honduras, leaving behind four children ages 15, 9, 3, and 2. Her mother, M, took unpaid leave from work to care for the grandchildren and support L's case, during which time she lost her health insurance and access to care for her diabetes. A GoFundMe campaign is raising money for plane tickets to reunite the children with their mother, M's lost wages, and legal fees.

Suspected federal immigration agents smashed the windows of a truck and pointed firearms at the driver and passenger during a forcible vehicle stop in Langley Park, Maryland, escalating from verbal commands to breaking the window within about 10 seconds. The driver indicated that ICE had just detained his father, and agents reportedly dragged both occupants from the vehicle at gunpoint. Video of the incident, showing the shattered windshield and an agent reaching toward the occupants with a firearm drawn, was posted to Reddit on August 14 and circulated widely. The caption states it is another instance of suspected ICE agents drawing firearms on U.S. citizens.

A man was detained by ICE agents outside a Home Depot on Eastern Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland, while appearing to experience a stroke or seizure. Video shared on social media shows agents handcuffing him and searching his pockets despite his unsteady head and lack of bodily control. Bystanders reportedly offered him water, which agents waved away, and no medical assistance was provided by agents at the scene.

Amos Sheik Massaquoi, 55, a former combatant in Liberia's civil wars, was deported to Liberia after living in the United States for nearly two decades. ICE alleges he served as chief bodyguard to Maj. Gen. Daniel Chea, a former leader in Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia, and that he participated in or ordered extrajudicial killings, torture, forced labor, arbitrary detentions, and the recruitment of child soldiers between 1989 and 2003. ICE also said he received specialized military training at an academy in China in 2004. He entered the U.S. legally in 2006 but overstayed his authorization, and Homeland Security Investigations arrested him in Maryland in 2019, after which he was released on bond. ICE took him back into custody in Baltimore on April 1, 2025, after he failed to comply with his release conditions, an immigration judge ordered his removal the following month, and he was deported to Liberia on August 11, 2026.

Jimy Samuel Godoy Alfaro, an 18-year-old Honduran man, was confronted by ICE agents in the parking lot of a market in Columbia, Maryland, after agents mistakenly linked his vehicle to another person with a deportation order. When agents ordered him out of the car and tried to break his window, he drove off, striking an ICE agent who was later treated at a hospital for trauma and abrasions. Godoy Alfaro turned himself in to Howard County Police on hit-and-run related traffic charges and is being held without bond at the Howard County Detention Center, while ICE has lodged a detainer seeking custody of him.