Teodoro (a pseudonym), 60, is a Honduran construction worker. Gangs extorting his family's small grocery killed his wife of 15 years, and he lived ten years alone in a small apartment in Texas. His two children, 13 and 15, live with his brother in Honduras. Around 2024 he was stopped on the street while walking to work and detained by ICE. He applied for asylum and other protection and was denied. He was held about 16 months: four to five months at the Three Rivers detention center near San Antonio, then about a year at FCI Bastrop, a federal prison where immigration detainees were mixed with sentenced prisoners. "The guards are there, but the prisoners run things inside," he said. Gang members took his food in front of the guards. "I couldn't go tell the guard they had taken my food, because then what would happen to me? They'd kill me." They also beat him in his cell. "Since the cameras are outside, not inside the room, they come into the room, beat you and walk out calm, like nothing happened. And I have to keep quiet." He walks with a cane. "That's why I walk with this cane, because they beat me and kicked me." He was removed in January 2026 and is seeking refugee status in Mexico. HUMSI interviewed him in Villahermosa in September 2026.