Human Impact Project

Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan man who entered the U.S. legally in 2024 through CBP One and had lived in Austin for about two years working as a DoorDash driver, was shot in the back by an ICE agent during a vehicle stop near Research Boulevard. He disputes DHS's account that he fled on foot, saying he never left his car, and no body camera footage of the encounter exists. He was discharged from Dell Seton Medical Center about four hours after being shot, still with a bullet lodged near his spine, and transferred roughly 140 miles away to the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall. His attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, says he has been denied timely surgery, given only over-the-counter pain relievers despite a fractured clavicle and partial paralysis, held in isolation, and denied consistent access to counsel; Rep. Greg Casar, who visited him, said he could lose feeling on his left side without surgery. After speaking to reporters, detention staff reportedly confiscated his communication tablet and moved him to solitary confinement. His legal team filed a federal habeas petition seeking his release and applied for a visa citing his status as a victim of violent crime, while Austin Mayor Kirk Watson and Reps. Casar and Joaquin Castro called for an independent investigation and release of body camera footage; DHS said it would investigate through Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI.

Adam Abdullah, a 31-year-old Somali auto mechanic and asylum seeker living in St. Paul with a pending asylum application, work permit and Social Security number, was arrested by masked federal agents on Dec. 12, 2025 during 'Operation Metro Surge.' Despite regularly attending ICE check-ins and having no criminal record beyond two parking tickets, he was moved between detention facilities in Minnesota, Kentucky and Louisiana over roughly nine months before being flown, shackled, toward Somalia but instead held at Guantánamo Bay's Camp Six alongside seven other Somali detainees, several also arrested in the Twin Cities. His attorney, Marc Prokosch, said calls with him were limited to five to ten minutes and possibly not confidential. Abdullah began a hunger strike over lack of information, after which he says guards beat him and placed him in a freezing solitary confinement cell; while detained, his mother died, and he says authorities denied him an international call and a request for voluntary departure to attend to her. The ACLU sued the federal government, arguing it lacks legal authority to detain immigrants overseas, and a judge allowed the case to proceed with a hearing set for October 14. Abdullah was deported to Somalia alongside eight other men, and his attorney said ICE also stopped publishing detainee location data.

Bryan Omar Sánchez, a Honduran man who had lived in Colorado for about a decade working as a gardener, truck driver, and pressure-washing business owner, was detained by ICE at his home on May 13 and moved through detention centers in Texas and Arizona. Despite a 2020 Convention Against Torture protection barring his return to Honduras and a pending asylum claim, he was placed on a nearly 22-hour flight to the Central African Republic on July 29 without his consent; one officer reportedly mocked him, asking 'Hey, Honduras, why are you going to Africa?' while Sánchez protested, 'Africa? I can't go to Africa.' Once in Bangui, he described being held in a shelter with restricted movement, facing language barriers and limited access to services, prompting Honduras' National Human Rights Commissioner (Conadeh) to demand urgent consular assistance and verification of his well-being. While detained, Sánchez represented himself in filings with Colorado's federal court, arguing he should not have been removed to a country he had never visited. U.S. District Judge Regina M. Rodríguez ruled that ICE violated his due process rights by giving him no notice or opportunity to challenge the removal, and ordered the government to return him to Colorado and release him without conditions such as GPS monitoring.

Luis Silas, a 58-year-old Mexican migrant, was detained by ICE agents in February 2026 while shopping for wood to build a bookcase for his wife near 43rd Avenue and Camelback Road in Phoenix; agents appeared to have identified him through his car's license plates and addressed him by name. Silas said officers threw him to the ground during the arrest, injuring his arm, and he was taken to the same ICE Central Avenue processing office where Ramón Barraza had been held, where he received only a single bean burrito every six hours for three days and one chance to shower. His son, Isaac Luis-Azamar, witnessed the arrest, intervened believing an agent was about to hit his father, and was himself arrested and accused of assaulting an ICE officer.

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, later followed by a permanent injunction, requiring ICE to improve conditions at its 26 Federal Plaza detention facility in Manhattan. Detainees, including Sergio Alberto Barco Mercado, who filed a complaint after mass arrests at the site, were reportedly held on floors without beds, given only two meals a day, and denied hygiene products and access to legal counsel. The court found that ICE willfully violated prior orders and kept detainees in overcrowded rooms without adequate bedding, hygiene supplies, or proper temperature control. The rulings required ICE to provide sleeping mats, hygiene products, and legal access to those held at the facility.

Nathan 'Nate' Samudzi, a delivery driver in Yankton, South Dakota, originally from Zimbabwe, was detained by ICE for a second time this year after reporting to the agency's Sioux Falls sub-field office, where he believed he might receive eased monitoring conditions. He was quickly transferred to a detention center and then to Minneapolis for a deportation flight, but a federal judge granted an emergency Temporary Restraining Order about 30 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart, halting his removal. Samudzi, who holds a valid work permit and had begun the citizenship process, had been under strict GPS monitoring since a prior detention in St. Louis in February; his wife, a local school teacher, said he complied with every condition. ICE says he has been subject to a final removal order since 2006 due to a drug conviction. His legal team filed an emergency habeas corpus petition citing fear of persecution or torture if returned to Zimbabwe, a country he has not lived in since age four, and he is currently held at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Fort Snelling, Minnesota, while friends, family, and South Dakota's congressional delegation seek updates on his case.

A multi-day ICE enforcement operation across New Bedford, Fall River, and Dartmouth, Massachusetts, detained at least 40 people in what community leaders called one of the largest such operations in recent months. Among those detained was Miguel Ixcuna-Ixcuna, a Guatemalan immigrant who has lived in the U.S. about 12 years and works as a fruit and vegetable packer in Plymouth; he was pulled from his car during a traffic stop while his partner and two young daughters watched. Agents also detained fish plant workers, mechanics, landscapers, roofers, and others heading to jobs, church, or school, including several people stopped at Cumberland Farms gas stations and possibly two Fall River students, and chased, tackled, and tased one fleeing man. Immigration attorneys said agents appeared to be racial profiling rather than targeting specific individuals, and one attorney said detainees at the Burlington facility were pressured to sign self-deportation paperwork without legal advice. Governor Maura Healey and Mayor Jon Mitchell criticized ICE for failing to notify local police, employers, or families, and attorneys with the Habeas Project of New England filed 25 habeas petitions, resulting in federal court stay orders keeping detainees in-state.

Carlos Josué Marchena Marchena, a 36-year-old Costa Rican national from Guanacaste who worked as a ride service driver and had four children, died on September 18, 2026 after being found unresponsive at Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana, where he was later pronounced dead. He had been detained since January and was moved between facilities in several states, with his cousin saying his care had been adequate in Michigan but grew inconsistent after later transfers. His sister, girlfriend, and a detainee in a neighboring cell said he had complained of missed insulin shots, missed meals, spoiled food, and insufficient water, and that in the day before his death he was vomiting, sweating, and turned pale purple; his girlfriend said he called around midnight saying his medication wasn't helping. ICE said his medical care was appropriate, while the fellow detainee said he received only irregular insulin shots and a single pill for his symptoms. Marchena had requested bail and voluntary deportation to Costa Rica, both denied, and friends said he had migrated seeking better opportunities for his children. He is at least the third detainee to die in less than six months at the Louisiana facility and the 58th ICE detainee to die since January 2025; a prior federal inspection had found Winn fell short of medical care and food service standards. A GoFundMe was launched to help return his body to Costa Rica while the family awaits autopsy results.

Malick, a pseudonym for a Senegalese man who fled to the United States in 2023 citing safety concerns, had obtained a work permit and a legal protection called withholding of removal that barred his deportation to his home country. Despite this protection, he was placed on a deportation flight to Ghana under a third-country removal agreement, alongside another deportee, Rabbiatu Kuyateh. 'I had started a new life in the United States,' he said. 'I felt safe.' After arriving in Ghana, he was sent to a remote military camp guarded by soldiers with little electricity or communication. He filmed video showing Kuyateh being forcibly dragged into a van, and after the footage spread online, Ghanaian troops arrived at the camp at night with trucks of soldiers.

Jorge (a pseudonym), a Guatemalan man who fled gang extortion threats and joined family in San Diego, was arrested by ICE during a raid on his construction worksite after working there for five months. He spent three months in detention, much of it in frigid holding cells where he slept on bare concrete with only a foil sheet, and developed bronchitis after officers allegedly made cells colder in retaliation for complaints; staff denied him hospital care. He said he signed English-language deportation papers he could not read after being threatened with years in federal detention, later learning the signing carried a 10-year reentry bar, and described being shackled during his deportation flight to Guatemala.

A Senegalese woman deported to Ghana under a third-country removal arrangement was sent, along with other detainees, to a remote military camp with little electricity or outside contact after Ghanaian officials reacted angrily to viral video of another deportee being forcibly removed. Fearing she would be returned to Senegal, she attempted suicide by drinking bleach and was hospitalized before being deported back to Senegal anyway.

Gisèle, who fled fighting between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, was deported by US authorities to Cameroon under a third-country removal agreement. Suffering from a thyroid condition, she was never able to obtain her medication at the Yaoundé migrant shelter despite repeated requests, and after five months there she abandoned plans to seek asylum in Cameroon and agreed to be sent back to the DR Congo out of concern her health would worsen.

Ahmed Soliman, a gay man in his early 30s who fled Egypt as a child and grew up in Phoenix and Tucson, had won a judge's ruling protecting him from deportation to Egypt over fears of persecution based on his sexuality and family history. Despite this ruling and a pending habeas petition, ICE transferred him from Arizona to Louisiana and deported him in April 2026 to a decommissioned hotel in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, under a $7.5 million third-country removal deal that has sent at least 66 people there since November 2025. After guards confiscated detainees' phones, police pointed rifles at Soliman and forced him to his knees when he tried to film officers and the forced removal of other detainees to Ethiopia. Amnesty International reported he was bound and beaten by police upon arrival. After speaking to journalists, including the American Prospect, about conditions at the facility, he was arrested on accusations of damaging property, then blindfolded, beaten, and pushed down a staircase before being transferred to a prison in Malabo. He and another detainee from Eritrea have since been missing for more than a week, with his attorneys unable to confirm charges against him or his location and fearing for his life, believing the arrest was retaliation for speaking to the media.

Yasmani Noel Moreno de Armas, a 31-year-old Cuban whose parents live in Hialeah, was detained without explanation by ICE officers on May 11, 2025 while spending the day in West Palm Beach, Florida. He believed he would be deported to Cuba but only learned he was headed to Africa more than two hours into a 22-hour flight that landed in Bangui, Central African Republic, on August 1. He is now confined at the Maison Confort lodging in Bangui alongside migrants from Afghanistan, Vietnam and Russia, suffering stomach problems and allergies without identification documents or legal status. He pays hotel security guards two or three dollars to leave the building, and local police have told him and others they can no longer walk the streets. A representative of the Cuban embassy told him Cuba would not take him back because he left the country as a 'rafter' migrant. 'They brought us here illegally,' he said; his parents 'went crazy, crying and yelling' when he called to tell them where he was.

Roberto Mosquera del Peral, a 59-year-old Cuban immigrant who arrived in the U.S. as a child during the 1980 Mariel boatlift and worked as a plumber while raising four daughters, was detained by ICE at a routine immigration appointment and held at the Krome detention center in Florida. He was later flown from Texas and deported without his consent to Eswatini in southern Africa under the Trump administration's third-country deportation program, since Cuba has refused to accept his return for nearly three decades. He has been held in a maximum-security cell at Matsapha Correctional Complex without being charged with any offense or given access to legal counsel. His lawyer said he staged a 30-day hunger strike, at one point raising serious health concerns, to win small concessions such as wearing his own clothes and having a cellphone to speak with family. Civic groups in Eswatini have filed court cases challenging the legality of detaining him and other deportees without charge.

Leonardo Sánchez, a Cuban migrant with a large abdominal hernia and a pending operation, was deported to Equatorial Guinea and is being held at the Hotel Bamy in Malabo. His mother, Caridad, said from Miami that she has not heard from him in a week because authorities took away detainees' phones to prevent them from speaking with the press. "What they're doing is criminal; the treatment is unfair," she said.

Carlos Rodríguez, a Cuban migrant, was one of five deportees who refused to leave the ICE deportation plane upon landing, saying they did not feel safe; he says officers carried him off the aircraft and beat him while he was handcuffed. He and three other Cubans, along with a Brazilian, had been told by authorities that if they stayed calm they would be returned to the United States, but the plane instead delivered them to Equatorial Guinea. "This is human trafficking, they trafficked us on a plane," he told EL PAÍS.

Raúl Suárez Herrero, a 59-year-old Cuban man who moved to the U.S. at age 12 and lived there for nearly five decades, was detained by ICE during a routine annual check-in in July 2025. He was held at the 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention facility in the Florida Everglades, where he says guards locked him in a metal cage roughly the size of a phone booth for more than 15 hours after he prayed aloud for a fellow detainee having a seizure. Suárez said he was kicked hard enough to bruise his leg, denied food and medical care, and left unable to lie down while fearing snakes and mosquitoes entering the cage, an experience he described as leaving him psychologically 'shattered.' A former truck driver who built a business with his brother, a U.S. citizen who died of COVID in 2021, Suárez was deported to Mexico in February 2026 after a federal judge's deadline for his release or removal passed. A DHS inspector general report later confirmed the facility used such small cages, calling the practice 'highly unconventional,' though DHS disputes claims that conditions were inhumane.

Jefferson, a Venezuelan asylum seeker and father of two, has spent months detained at the Don Hutto detention center in Texas, separated from his wife and children. Speaking with his wife by video call, he described the facility's living conditions and lack of access to healthcare. A local pastor who meets weekly with families of detainees said roughly one in four families in her congregation has had a loved one arrested and deported.

Juan Gerardo Alatorre Martinez, 46, a Mexican national who has lived in the U.S. for more than 25 years, was detained by ICE agents as he arrived for his shift at a gas station in Conway, Washington. Neighbors and coworkers described him as a beloved figure in town, sometimes calling him the 'unofficial mayor,' noting he paid taxes, kept his immigration paperwork in order, and had spent years helping others in the community. Martinez had been pursuing lawful permanent residency through a petition filed decades ago by his U.S. citizen brother and says he does not want to self-deport. His attorney said the original ICE report indicated agents were searching for someone connected to a car Martinez was driving, though DHS said the arrest was part of targeted enforcement citing civil violations including driving without a license. While held at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Martinez has described unsanitary conditions, medical neglect, and witnessing another detainee injure himself, as community members have raised over $20,000 for his legal defense.