Most stories in the Human Impact Project come from news reports, court records and other public sources. The stories on this page are different: the Human Security Initiative (HUMSI) gathered them firsthand, by sitting down with people the United States deported and listening to what happened to them. They also appear alongside every other incident in the database, marked with the source “HUMSI field interview.”

Our first trip to Mexico

From September 8 to 19, 2026, a HUMSI team that included a physician traveled to southern Mexico: Tapachula and Palenque in Chiapas, and Villahermosa in Tabasco. We interviewed more than 80 people who had recently been deported or removed from the United States, at migrant shelters, at the reception area where removal buses arrive, and on the street.

Many had lived in the U.S. for decades, raising children who are U.S. citizens. They came from Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and many of those who are not Mexican had been sent to Mexico, a country where they had never lived. This was the first of many trips.

A report in January 2027

HUMSI is writing a report on these interviews with Physicians for Human Rights and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, to be released in January 2027. This page shares a first set of stories now. When the report is published, we will add more profiles from these interviews to the database.

How we tell these stories

Everyone here chose to speak with us after being fully informed about our project. To protect them and their families, we use pseudonyms and leave out details that could identify them. Each story is based on the person’s own account, checked against any documents they showed us. We do not publish interview recordings, and we delete them once they have been transcribed.