Emilio, a Deaf Venezuelan man who had lived in Texas for nearly four years and worked at Amazon, was detained by ICE in December 2025 during what he expected to be a routine asylum check-in. He spent about nine weeks in immigration detention without ever receiving a sign language interpreter despite requesting one. He was later placed on a bus in southern Texas and only realized he was being deported to Mexico, rather than his home country of Venezuela, when he saw the Mexican flag; he arrived in Villahermosa with no passport and had never lived in Mexico before. He did not know Mexican Sign Language, which differs from Venezuelan Sign Language, and traveled to Mexico City with financial help from fellow Deaf community members, remaining stuck with no connections in the country. A second Deaf immigrant, Edgar, reported similar experiences of being denied interpreter access during his deportation proceedings. According to data from the nonprofit Mobile Pathways verified by Mother Jones, more than 100 Deaf people who use sign language as their primary language have received deportation or removal orders since the beginning of 2026.