Human Impact Project

Mauricio Martínez was detained by ICE agents during a traffic stop on January 9 and transferred to a detention facility in El Paso, Texas. His wife Nancy Parra and their three children have remained largely confined to their home. Parra reported that her husband is held in conditions including overcrowding, spoiled food, and poor sanitation. The family experiences financial hardship without his income.

A man named Julio, an ImmDef Law Center client and father of a U.S. military servicemember, died on February 25 after his health rapidly declined following ICE detention. Despite having a lawful pathway to permanent residency and being medically vulnerable, ICE refused to release him and he was handcuffed to a hospital bed during his final days. His attorney secured his release but the damage to his health was irreversible.

Leonela Liliana Gomez Hernandez, a 27-year-old in her eighth month of pregnancy, was detained by ICE on a Wednesday while traveling to a prenatal appointment at a clinic in South Central Los Angeles and was deported to Nicaragua on Friday morning. She called a friend around 1 p.m. on the day of her detention to report her apprehension by federal immigration agents. Her husband said he could not locate her in ICE's database and only learned of her situation when she called him while already traveling to Central America. She told him that federal immigration agents had pressured her to sign her own deportation papers.

Alberto C.M., a Mexican citizen who entered the country legally on a temporary H2B worker visa in 2022, was arrested by ICE agents in St. Paul during Operation Metro Surge and suffered life-threatening skull fractures and brain hemorrhages. A federal judge ordered his immediate release after 15 days of hospitalization, finding his detention unlawful as he was arrested without a warrant. Hospital records indicate C.M. reported being dragged and mistreated by federal agents, though ICE has refused to provide details about the cause of his injuries, only stating he "got his s*** rocked."

A fifth-grade girl from Valley View Elementary was detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, along with her mother and stepfather. The school district lost contact with the family on January 9, 2026, and did not know where they were. Her detention was discovered when two schoolmates, who had been detained and then released, recognized her in the detention facility cafeteria. As of the article's publication, the girl remained detained at Dilley.

Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, a 68-year-old Honduran national who had lived in the U.S. for decades, died on January 6, 2026, at John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Indio while in ICE custody. He was arrested during an ICE enforcement operation in Newark, New Jersey, on November 16, 2025, and transferred to the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico. While detained, he complained of vomiting, stomach pain, chest pain, and shortness of breath for over a week, but medical staff only provided pain pills without diagnosing the underlying cause. He was transferred to El Centro Regional Medical Center on January 4 after developing chest pain, then airlifted to JFK Memorial Hospital in Indio, where he was pronounced dead two days later. Medical personnel determined the cause was heart-related complications. His family was not notified until after his death and later questioned the quality and timeliness of his medical care.

Rebecca Pinyerd, a 70-year-old Filipina lawful permanent resident who has lived in the United States for over 40 years, was scheduled for deportation to the Philippines but the flight was cancelled after airline officials determined she was medically unfit to fly due to advanced kidney disease, thyroid complications, and uncontrolled hypertension. She remains in immigration detention at Clay County Jail in Indiana with no new deportation date announced. Her family has expressed concerns about her access to medical care while in custody and has called for an independent medical evaluation.

Ramón Barraza, a 60-year-old Mexican national from Sinaloa who worked as a certified public accountant in Mexico and spent two decades installing ceramic tile floors in Phoenix, was pulled over near 75th Avenue and McDowell Road by unmarked ICE SUVs while driving to a job site. Plainclothes agents with no visible identification, who appeared to have tracked his truck using license-plate data, boxed him in, addressed him in Spanish, and handcuffed him, telling him 'you're the one we came for.' He was taken to ICE's Central Avenue processing facility, where he said he was held for 26 hours in an overcrowded, windowless cell with about 25 other detainees, given only a frozen bean burrito every six hours, no water or fruit, and was denied a phone call to his family for hours. An agent later prepared a 'voluntary departure' document himself, instructing Barraza only to confirm pre-filled personal information rather than answering open questions, and told him signing it would let his girlfriend later petition for his legal reentry.

Juan Nicolas, a two-month-old baby, is the youngest person currently in ICE custody and is being held with his mother Mireya López Sánchez at a family detention center in Dulles, Texas. Due to poor conditions including rotten food and contaminated water, the mother stopped producing milk and the baby became sick. The child suffered a medical emergency but has not been seen by a doctor as there is none on site and immigration officials refuse to send him to a hospital.

A 31-year-old Cuban man, identified as Ricardo H., reported being beaten by approximately 15 guards at Camp East Montana detention center at Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas, after spending more than 20 hours without food and banging on a metal door to request meals. According to his account documented in a Human Rights Watch and ACLU report, six agents held him down face-first, stomped on his neck, and caused injuries to his ear and collarbone. The 84-page report, based on interviews with 80 people detained at the facility between October 2025 and June 2026, documents a pattern of alleged abuses including raids by masked agents without visible identification, unsanitary conditions, and cases of people detained despite documentation of legal status. The report also documents the death of another Cuban detainee, Gerardo Lunas Campos, 55, on January 3, 2026, whose autopsy determined the cause of death was asphyxiation due to compression of the neck and torso, classified as homicide.

Sabrina Carmona Sanchez, a 41-year-old transgender woman from Ecuador, was arrested by immigration agents on January 3, 2026, at a hotel on Long Island and transferred to ICE custody at Adams County detention facility in Mississippi. She had previously been released on recognizance by Border Patrol in 2023, granted work authorization, and allowed to remain free while her immigration case proceeded. She is now held in a men's dormitory without being offered a bond hearing, in violation of her Fifth Amendment due process rights, according to her legal team at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Her habeas corpus petition challenges the government's policy of categorically denying bond hearings to undocumented immigrants arrested under the Trump administration's July 2025 detention guidance.

Nexan Aroldo Asencio Corado, a Guatemalan carpenter and small business owner who had lived in Milford, Massachusetts for about a decade without legal status, was arrested by masked ICE agents outside his home on May 30, 2025, while his young twin sons, Jhon and Damian, watched. His wife, Christina Toledo, a U.S. citizen, said agents told her they were looking for his brother-in-law, Victor, and dismissed the couple's approved I-130 petition as possibly fake even after it was presented. Toledo said Asencio Corado, who has no criminal record, spent several nights in custody sleeping on a bathroom floor without a shower, enough food, or water, and the family was denied bond while 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. He was deported to Guatemala months later, and his application to remain in the U.S. was set aside. In December 2025, Toledo and the boys traveled to his home village near the Salvadoran border to reunite with him for the holidays before returning to Milford in January 2026, as the family continues deciding whether to relocate permanently.

Sam Rivera, who held an asylum visa, was detained by ICE for nine months starting in January before being released. Before his detention, he had built a small home renovation business in South Florida, but during his time in custody his business collapsed, his car was repossessed, and he lost the tools he used for work. He was also transferred to a detention facility in California, far from his home and community, and now faces $10,000 in immigration legal fees as he tries to rebuild his business and life.

Jorge Paredes, a Guatemalan national who lived in the United States for more than 20 years, was arrested by ICE in January 2026 and subsequently deported. He reports that when he received his belongings before his repatriation flight, he discovered that more than $1,300 he had when arrested was missing and not returned to him.

Two dogs were left confined in an Oklahoma apartment without food or water for approximately a week after ICE agents detained their owners during an enforcement operation in January 2026. A neighbor alerted the property manager after noticing the distressed animals, and animal welfare officers found the dogs frightened, in a damaged apartment, and without sustenance. The responding officer stated that ICE did not notify local animal control of the pets' presence, despite what he said is standard protocol to inform animal control when animals are left behind during arrests.

Zahra Razavinik, a 66-year-old Iranian immigrant, has taught preschoolers at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church in Houston for nearly 30 years and cared for her husband with a heart condition. She was detained by ICE in January 2026 during a routine immigration check-in and has been held at El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas for six months. Her attorneys argue she cannot safely return to Iran because she is Christian and faces persecution there, and that no other country has agreed to accept her. A 2006 immigration judge's order had previously granted her a stay of deportation due to risk of persecution as a Christian.

Khadija (also referred to by the pseudonym Abina), a bisexual woman from Ghana, fled her country fearing for her life after she and her family were persecuted because of her sexual orientation. She crossed the U.S. border in December 2024 to seek asylum and was detained at the Eloy detention center in Arizona. Denied eligibility for asylum only because of the "circumvention of lawful pathways" regulation, she proved to an immigration judge that she was a refugee and was granted withholding of removal in July 2025. Instead of releasing her, ICE continued to detain her and told her she would be sent to Cameroon — a country she had never been to and where homosexuality is also criminalized. When she requested a fear interview and refused to sign voluntary deportation papers, an ICE officer told her to "get the fuck out of my face." In January 2026 she was placed on a flight in shackles around her wrists, ankles, and waist, with stopovers in Louisiana and Senegal, and deported to Cameroon. There she lives in a crowded room with about ten other women and other third-country nationals, lacking clothing, sanitary pads, and basic hygiene products, and was told she has temporary authorization to remain for only two months. As of July 2026, she remains in limbo, afraid to go outside the building where she is housed and unable to return to Ghana, where she fears persecution.

Multiple Minnesota residents detained by ICE in January 2026 and transported to Camp East Montana detention center in El Paso, Texas reported serious medical neglect and unsafe conditions. An 18-year-old legal resident with a thyroid condition arrived with severe abdominal pain but received no medication during her detention and had her documents taken upon release. A Cuban man with a pending asylum application waited five days to see medical staff, at which point he was diagnosed with COVID. Two detainees under age 21 were placed in a holding cell with 40 people despite its 20-person capacity, and detainees reported limited phone access and inadequate food. In March 2026, U.S. Rep. Kelly Morrison, D-Minn., a doctor, conducted an unannounced oversight visit to the facility, where security initially delayed her entry for about an hour. She was not permitted to speak with detainees but was shown an empty tent structure holding pods of 64 to 72 people with crammed metal bunk beds, partial-privacy showers, and about six sinks, comparing the facility's appearance to a commercial livestock building.

Ariana Velasquez, a 14-year-old from Honduras who moved to the U.S. with her mother, Stephanie Valladares, at age 7, has been held at the Dilley immigration detention center for about 45 days. Valladares had applied for asylum and later married a neighbor from Honduras already living in the U.S., with whom she had two more children, Gianna ("Gigi") and Jacob, whom Ariana cared for after school. Ariana, a freshman at Hicksville High School, has fallen behind in her classes and misses her siblings and her favorite sign language teacher; her mother installed a kitchen security camera so she could check on the younger children from work, and Jacob has been talking to the camera hoping to reach his mother. Ariana has reported severe depression, sadness, and inadequate medical care with long wait times for medication.

Oudone Lothirath, a 57-year-old Laotian refugee who arrived in the U.S. in the early 1980s, was detained by ICE in January 2026 during an immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota. While held for 10 days at a detention facility in El Paso, Texas, he missed vital chemotherapy sessions for terminal Hodgkin's lymphoma and received no medical care for his diabetes and heart condition. After his release, he was too weakened to continue his remaining chemotherapy treatments, and his cancer subsequently spread to his bone marrow. His care assistant, Christina Vilay, said he would have had "many more months" to live had he completed his scheduled chemotherapy. Lothirath, a working member of the Minneapolis Lao community who attended a local Buddhist temple and held a current work authorization card issued in 2023, is now receiving hospice care.