Human Impact Project

A single father of six U.S. citizen children applied for a special visa but was deported by ICE. The case involved family ties and legal efforts to prevent deportation.

Cary López Alvarado, a U.S. citizen, was arrested by ICE while nine months pregnant after exiting immigration court in New York City alongside her husband, a Guatemalan immigrant. ICE detained her overnight but released her after discovering her citizenship status. She experienced sharp stomach pains immediately after release and gave birth days later. She has filed a claim against the federal government seeking $1 million, citing unlawful arrest and unconstitutional conduct. Her husband has since been deported, leaving her without income and uncertain about childcare arrangements.

Two 17-year-old U.S. citizens, including Luis Ochoa, were detained by ICE agents in Alamo, Texas, after stopping to record an immigration enforcement operation on their way to a Marine Corps recruitment office. Video showed an agent repeatedly hitting one teen and agents using pepper spray while pulling him from his car and handcuffing him; Ochoa said his wrist was broken and that an agent told him, after he identified himself as a citizen, "I don't give a damn. Your parents can't help you now." The teens were held for eight hours before being released, and DHS described them as "anti-ICE agitators" who obstructed and assaulted officers. Ten days later, Luis's mother, Teresa de Jesus Ochoa Briseño, was arrested outside the Alamo restaurant where she worked as a cook, denied the chance to sign voluntary departure papers, issued a final removal order, and sent to Reynosa, Mexico the same day without Luis or her attorney being allowed to see her beforehand; Luis said agents told the family the arrest was connected to their Facebook posts and pending lawsuits over his detention.

The Department of Homeland Security has said that filming and posting videos of ICE agents constitutes "violence" and threatened to prosecute people who record agents during operations. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called such recording "doxing," echoing Secretary Kristi Noem's earlier statement that videotaping or doxing agents qualifies as violence against them. Georgia-based journalist Mario Guevara, who has legal work authorization, has been held in ICE detention for more than two months after he was targeted for recording enforcement operations. When asked to substantiate claims of a sharp rise in violence against agents, DHS cited examples such as trash dumped on an agent's lawn and a sign bearing a profanity, and an ACLU attorney representing injured journalists and legal observers in Los Angeles disputed the department's violence statistics.

Maria, 39, who came to El Paso from Ciudad Juárez on a visitor visa fleeing violence targeting her husband, a Mexican doctor now a naturalized U.S. citizen, was detained on Sept. 9, 2025, immediately after an immigration judge ordered her deportation at a hearing. About seven plainclothes, masked agents handcuffed her outside the courtroom and took her to the El Paso Processing Service Center, where she remained detained through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. She was released Jan. 20, 2026, with an ankle monitor, and said she and her four U.S.-born children underwent family therapy after the ordeal.

Darian Maldonado Medina, a Venezuelan with Temporary Protected Status, was detained by ICE during a routine check-in in Tampa on September 5, 2025, and deported to Venezuela three weeks later. He had valid TPS status at the time of detention, a pending family petition through his U.S. citizen mother, and a 15-month-old U.S. citizen son and partner remaining in Florida. A federal court order had extended TPS protections prior to his deportation. Lawyers have argued that the deportation violated federal law and court orders.

A California State University Channel Islands professor was charged with throwing a tear gas canister during an incident. In a separate immigration enforcement action in Southern California, a legal green card holder who was working toward U.S. citizenship was detained by ICE. The woman's husband expressed concern following her detention.

On September 4, 2025, roughly 60 armed and masked federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations, ICE, CBP and local sheriff's offices raided the Nutrition Bar Confectioners plant in Cato, New York, a town of 2,500 people east of Syracuse. Officers broke down a locked bathroom door on female employees, herded over 100 workers into a break room, and separated them by citizenship status without individualized suspicion, questioning pregnant employees and parents worried about children waiting at home. Investigators also interviewed the plant's general manager about hiring practices and potential fraudulent documents, while officers searched offices, storage rooms and hallways for anyone in hiding and debated which company files to seize. At least 57 workers were arrested, more than 20 were separated from their children, and some were denied access to attorneys or family before being sent to out-of-state detention facilities. Pedro Rojas, a U.S. citizen who was seized and interrogated, said agents targeted him and his coworkers because they are Latino. Only five of those arrested faced criminal charges, the most serious being unlawful reentry, and two plaintiffs were deported, though one has since been allowed to reenter the country. The NYCLU and the Worker Justice Center of New York filed a class action lawsuit against DHS alleging officers exceeded their search warrants and violated workers' Fourth Amendment rights, and body camera footage reviewed by the Associated Press as part of that lawsuit has now become public.

A couple expecting their third child is facing deportation. Their two other children, including a 5-month-old, have been placed with family members. LULAC has found legal representation and is seeking financial assistance to help care for their U.S. citizen children.

At the Broadview detention center in Illinois, a masked agent put a protester in a chokehold and had to be pulled off by another agent. The woman was sprayed in the face with a chemical irritant, shot with projectiles, and violently pushed and shoved to the ground before the chokehold.

In Broadview, Illinois, federal officers used force against photojournalists documenting protest activity from public streets. Dave Decker, a photojournalist visibly wearing press credentials, described agents about 20 feet away on the other side of a fence aiming weapons toward him and a photographer, Leigh Kunkel, as they were partially shielded by a van. He heard popping noises and was struck in the arm and back. Kunkel was also injured. He also photographed an agent pointing a long gun at his camera. The next day, as he recorded officers pushing people to the ground and laughing, an agent fired a pepper ball toward his face from about 30 feet away and hit his camera. He was later shot in the legs at close range after an agent said, 'Get him.' Decker, who had covered hundreds of protests, said he had never seen law enforcement hostility like what he witnessed at Broadview.

In Colorado, after Routt County Commissioner Angelica Salinas recorded agents from her vehicle stopping people and patrolling mobile home parks near Steamboat Springs, she reported that she was followed and boxed in at a nearby post office. Agents left when they saw her husband. An ICE spokesperson later called her account a "blatant and pathetic lie," releasing a photo it said showed her car on a road in Oak Creek, while Salinas maintained that armed, masked agents in unmarked vehicles had been positioned behind and beside her car.

Ernesto Diaz, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, was walking down Archer Avenue on Chicago's Southwest Side in late September when masked federal agents grabbed him, slammed him against a vehicle, and handcuffed him. Agents ripped out his earbuds and threatened to tase him when he moved. After about five minutes of questioning and inspecting his ID and Social Security card, agents threw his wallet on the ground and drove away. Diaz believes he was targeted based on his race and ethnicity during Operation Midway Blitz.

D.A., a political activist who was violently attacked in Nigeria and is married to a U.S. citizen, was granted protection from removal to Nigeria in June after a judge found he faced persecution there. He says ICE agents beat him when he refused to board a military cargo plane bound for Ghana, where he was flown with a dozen other West African men and women. After more than two weeks in Ghana's Dema Camp, where deportees faced heat, mosquitoes and unsanitary conditions, he was sent to Togo without travel documents and is now staying in a hotel room with other deportees, relying on money sent by his family in the United States.

A Chelsea, Massachusetts mother who is a U.S. citizen was detained by ICE in September 2025. Her 18-year-old daughter, Ana Michelle Ramirez Sanan, testified before a Senate committee about the encounter, describing finding their car with shattered windows and her mother being thrown to the ground during the incident.

Joseluis Ramirez, who moved to the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager and has lived in the country for roughly two decades, was stopped and detained by ICE while driving to work in Wapato, Washington on Aug. 31, after several vehicles blocked him at a stop sign. Ramirez has no criminal record and had worked at the same fruit company for 15 years, serving as the sole provider for his wife Vanessa Jimenez and her five children, all U.S. citizens, including a stepson, Evan Frias, who calls him 'dad.' Days before his arrest, Jimenez had confronted and filmed ICE agents outside the Yakima County jail and at the Yakima Municipal Court, and she suspects agents used a photo of her vehicle or license plate data to track down her husband. Agents reportedly encouraged Ramirez to sign self-deportation papers, which he declined. His bond request was later denied, and his family has filed a habeas corpus petition and started a GoFundMe to cover legal fees and household expenses while caring for two children with developmental delays and managing Jimenez's own disabling injury.

Daryn Herzberg, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, alleges he was assaulted by Department of Homeland Security personnel outside an ICE facility in South Portland on August 13, 2025. According to video evidence and his attorney's account, federal agents tackled him to the ground, with one officer grabbing him by the hair and slamming his face into the ground multiple times. Herzberg sustained injuries including a concussion, abrasions, bruising, chest contusions, and breathing issues. On August 27, Herzberg filed a federal lawsuit against DHS alleging battery and unconstitutional use of force. Federal authorities also charged Herzberg with obstructing the facility and throwing objects; his attorney characterizes these charges as bogus and retaliatory.

Alejandro Theodoro Orellana, 29, a member of the Boyle Heights-based community organization Centro CSO, pleaded not guilty to handing out protective face shields to protesters during an anti-ICE demonstration in Los Angeles. He faces federal charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting civil disorder. Trial was set for August 26 in LA federal court.

Francisco Hernandez-Corona, an undocumented immigrant who had lived in the U.S. for most of his life, self-deported to Mexico. He was married to a U.S. citizen, but a permanent bar from a childhood unauthorized entry prevented him from adjusting his status while in the country, leaving him with no legal pathway to remain.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped a U.S. citizen of seven years on Jan. 29 while she was driving to pick up a cake for her grandson's birthday, shattering her car window, dragging her from her vehicle and throwing her to the ground before leaving without calling for medical help. She sustained a torn rotator cuff, a concussion and bruised ribs. On July 28, U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas raised her case at a congressional hearing on ICE accountability, calling for body cameras on immigration agents and independent investigations when agents injure people. Salem Police told her daughter they could not investigate federal officer misconduct and referred her to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, which has not responded to questions about the stop.