Human Impact Project

Bayartulga Avirmed, a deaf Mongolian who fled to the U.S. after surviving a disability-related assault that left him with a traumatic brain injury, was detained at Otay Mesa Detention Center since February and denied a qualified Mongolian Sign Language interpreter, with ICE at times relying on Google Translate. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw issued a preliminary injunction in July requiring an MSL interpreter, redone evaluations, a rescheduled competency hearing, and his sister's presence at proceedings. Avirmed was released from custody shortly after the ruling and is now living with his sister, a U.S. citizen, in Virginia, though his immigration case remains open.

Flora, a Venezuelan trafficking survivor with an active asylum claim and pending T visa application, was detained by ICE on January 30, 2025, at a routine check-in appointment after reporting her alleged trafficker to federal authorities. She was transported 1,200 miles to a detention center in Louisiana and separated from her 4-year-old son and 18-month-old daughter for two months. Flora had fled her alleged abuser in early 2025 with help from a local nonprofit and was in the process of obtaining a T visa for trafficking survivors when ICE detained her. She was released on April 2, 2025, hours before a court hearing on her habeas corpus petition, but the detention caused significant retraumatization to her and her children.

The 40-year-old man is a decorated U.S. Army veteran who deployed twice to Iraq, received a Purple Heart after a 2004 explosion caused traumatic brain injury, and was honorably discharged in 2008. While struggling with untreated TBI and PTSD, he shot a pregnant woman, was convicted of attempted murder, sentenced to 52 years, and served 15 years before being paroled on January 21, 2025, when ICE immediately detained him. His commanding officer said his 2006 citizenship application was completed and eligible but lost in processing, and an earlier attempt to deport him to Venezuela failed when that country refused to accept him. In November 2025, ICE moved him through Florence and Nogales, Arizona, and deported him to Mexico, with the removal occurring on Veterans Day and the 21st anniversary of the explosion that wounded him; his wife, Tia, said she has not been told his whereabouts, and his former platoon members and medic have voiced dismay over the timing.

Ana Cañedo Luna, a business owner and long-term U.S. resident who was brought to the country at age 10, was arrested on January 9 after a traffic stop in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where she holds a valid work permit. She was transferred to the ICE Denver Contract Detention Facility in Aurora, Colorado, where she spent five months and ten days in custody. Cañedo discovered that her previous lawyer had requested a voluntary departure without her knowledge or consent, prompting her to change legal representation. After switching to local attorneys and filing a writ of habeas corpus, she was released on June 19 and reunited with her wife, Gloria Guerra. Cañedo continues to fight her immigration case while dealing with the psychological trauma of her detention and remains fearful of future arrest, saying the experience felt like "psychological torture" and a "never-ending nightmare."

Genry Ruiz-Guillen, a 29-year-old Honduran man with schizoaffective disorder, was transferred to ICE custody in October 2024 and held at Krome North Service Processing Center. While detained, he experienced seizures, dizziness, fainting spells, confusion, and loss of consciousness. In December he was hospitalized for acute psychosis and subsequently transferred to three Larkin Health System hospitals for psychiatric treatment and treatment of rhabdomyolysis, a life-threatening muscle breakdown condition. He died on January 8, 2025. The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner ruled his cause of death as "complications of schizoaffective disorder," but medical experts including a former NYC chief medical examiner questioned this finding, noting mental illness alone cannot be a proper cause of death and citing concern about multiple medications in his system and the unresolved rhabdomyolysis.