Mauricio (a pseudonym) lived 20 years in the United States, ten in North Carolina and ten in Houston, without trouble with the law. Police took him out of a Houston bar after his parked truck was reported to have hit another car. He says he had not been drinking before driving and passed a walking test. He was booked into the Harris County jail with an immigration hold from the first day. A court-appointed lawyer had him sign papers and never came back, and his court date was six weeks away, so he paid his $100 bond knowing ICE would take him and deport him. "We weren't arrested for being bad, but because we were undocumented. I don't think it's right to treat us that way," he said. At the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, guards ignored requests, sick detainees signed up for care and were never called, and he went a week without a working phone code. "They don't give us information, nothing. They keep us in the dark." On September 12, 2026, he was flown shackled from Texas to California and then to Tapachula, Mexico, chained from midnight until an hour before landing. "All day going around in the plane, tied up." HUMSI met him the day he arrived.