Byron (a pseudonym), 36, is from Guatemala. Around 2016 he fled after gang members beat him with bats and knocked out a tooth, and he spent about ten years working construction in New Jersey before returning to Guatemala for his daughter. In March 2026, trying to rejoin his sister in New Jersey, he crossed the border after the smuggler abandoned his group in the desert. Agents threw him face-down and handcuffed him behind his back, tightening the cuffs when he moved. "Even if you don't understand English, you can feel it, you know when someone is insulting you," he said. "Those treatments I call inhumane are because of that: being treated like animals, grabbed like that, roughly." During about two days in cold, crowded custody he was woken early in the morning for questioning and signed a document in English that he could not read, without a lawyer and without a copy. He was flown to Guatemala City, where church volunteers gave him 150 quetzales, and took buses back to the Mexican border. He is now in Tapachula seeking a humanitarian visa and cuts papayas to pay for medical care. "Human rights should be there, right?" he said. HUMSI interviewed him in Tapachula in September 2026.