The destination was the Central African Republic, a country where Moreno de Armas is not a citizen and had no personal ties. He had left Cuba years earlier and built a life in the United States before federal immigration authorities detained him in May.

For Moreno de Armas and the other Latino men sent with him, the flight did not end the harm. The men told ABC News that they arrived without passports or identification documents and were left in legal limbo. Aristides Fernandez Garcia, another Cuban deported to the Central African Republic, said they had no visa or papers and described their status there as illegal. He said the lack of documents meant that even if he had the money to travel somewhere else, he could not do it.

Fernandez Garcia described their living situation in terms that leave little room for institutional abstraction. He told ABC News that they were “prisoners here” and said they were not being allowed to leave or go anywhere. He then said, “I feel kidnapped,” and added that their rights had been violated because they are human beings. Those statements are his direct account of what life has become after the U.S. government removed him to a country where he says he lacks the documents required to move on.

Moreno de Armas has described the experience as a nightmare and said the men face risk every day. He also pointed to the fact that the United States warns its own citizens against traveling to the same country where he was sent. The State Department currently classifies the Central African Republic at Level 4 — Do Not Travel because of unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, health risks and terrorism, and says the U.S. government has limited ability to provide emergency services there.

The Department of Homeland Security nevertheless told ABC News that Moreno de Armas and the other men interviewed had been deported to a “safe country” and said the government was applying the law as written. That defense sits beside a separate U.S. government warning telling Americans not to travel there for any reason. For the men who were sent there, the contradiction is not theoretical: they are living in the country DHS described as safe while another federal agency warns of kidnapping, violent crime, unrest and terrorism.

Their experience is part of a broader system that has expanded rapidly. Human Rights First and Refugees International documented first-time and repeated third-country transfer flights to the Central African Republic during 2026, while ICE Flight Monitor reported a record 16 third-country transfer flights to 13 countries in August alone. The groups say many people subjected to these transfers are sent to countries where they have no meaningful legal or personal connection and can face detention, family separation or onward removal.

What makes their case especially stark is what came afterward. Moreno de Armas and Fernandez Garcia say they were left without the documents they need to travel, unable to freely leave, and dependent on whatever options remain available inside a country they did not choose.

The unresolved accountability now reaches beyond the flight itself. The public record still does not explain why these men were sent specifically to the Central African Republic, what meaningful notice they received before removal, why they arrived without the documents they say they need to leave, or who is responsible for restoring their ability to travel. It also leaves the government to answer how DHS can defend the country as safe for deportees while the State Department maintains its highest possible travel warning for Americans.

Moreno de Armas and Fernandez Garcia are living inside those unanswered questions. One believed he was being transferred within the United States before learning in the air that he was being sent to Africa. The other says he is now a prisoner without the papers he needs to leave and describes the experience in his own words: he feels kidnapped.

Americans Against ICE will continue following Yasmany Moreno de Armas and Aristides Fernandez Garcia for any change in their status, ability to leave the Central African Republic, or other significant development in their case.

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AAI HAS DOCUMENTED THIS THIRD-COUNTRY DEPORTATION SYSTEM BEFORE — READ THE CASES BELOW

That record includes Roberto Mosquera, who was sent to Eswatini; Carlos Tellez Sanchez, who was deported to Liberia; and other protected immigrants routed toward the Central African Republic despite having no meaningful ties to those countries. Yasmany Moreno de Armas and Aristides Fernandez Garcia now add another case to that expanding pattern.

PROTECTED IMMIGRANTS SENT TO COUNTRIES THEY NEVER CALLED HOME ↓

David Streever already knew what it felt like when criticism of ICE moved out of an inbox and into his family’s life. Months after he sent a furious email to then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, federal agents went to Streever’s Rochester home, delivered a warning notice to his wife, and later tracked him to a New York City hotel where he was staying with his 7-year-old daughter. Americans Against ICE documented that encounter in July. Now, the federal government’s use of that warning against Streever has been blocked by a judge.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras granted Streever a preliminary injunction after finding that his First Amendment claim is likely to succeed. The ruling does not end the lawsuit, but it changes the legal position around the warning notice that DHS used against him. Contreras concluded that Streever’s January email was far removed from the kind of actual threat that falls outside First Amendment protection and blocked DHS from making further threats against him based on that protected political speech while the case continues.

That matters because the warning was not an abstract piece of paperwork. DHS agents physically brought federal enforcement power to Streever’s home after he criticized ICE leadership. When he was not there, they gave the notice to his wife. They then located him at a hotel in New York City, contacted the front desk, left repeated voicemails and sought his signature on the document while he was traveling with his daughter. Streever later said the experience made him afraid to express his views as openly as he had before.

The warning told Streever that his email could violate federal law. The message he had sent Lyons was angry and severe, but the government’s own position in court stopped short of arguing that the email itself contained a threat. Justice Department lawyers did not make that claim in their filings, and Contreras found that the speech remained constitutionally protected political criticism.

The judge’s order therefore reaches beyond whether Streever’s words were polite, productive or restrained. The question before the court was whether the federal government could place the possibility of prosecution over a citizen’s political speech when that speech did not cross into an actual threat. Contreras found that Streever was likely to prevail on that claim and described the warning as effectively placing prosecution over his continued political expression.

For Streever, the pressure had already reached his daughter before the case reached a judge. After DHS tracked them to the hotel, Streever prepared his 7-year-old for the possibility that federal agents could confront them again on their way home. According to his lawsuit, she began to cry and told him she did not want the agents to kill him. The legal dispute that followed grew from that experience: a father explaining federal agents to his child because political criticism had been followed by a warning notice and a search for him across two cities.

DHS has defended its conduct by saying that it investigates credible threats against ICE personnel and other federal officers. The department has also pointed to an increase in threats and assaults against immigration enforcement officials. But in Streever’s case, the government did not argue in court that his email itself contained a threat, and Contreras’s order does not stop DHS from investigating genuinely threatening future conduct. It blocks the government from using the warning against Streever’s protected speech.

The ruling also reopens a question Americans Against ICE had already documented before Streever filed suit: how broadly DHS and ICE used these warning notices against critics.

Paigelynne Gonyea, another New York resident, was confronted by ICE agents at work after she posted that Jonathan Ross should be indicted following the killing of Renee Good. She was presented with the same warning form. Gonyea disputed the government’s accusation that she had unlawfully exposed an ICE agent’s address. Her case is separate from Streever’s, and Contreras’s order does not extend automatic protection to her. But the existence of the same warning mechanism in both cases makes the unanswered scope of the practice impossible to dismiss as a question involving only one person.

DHS has declined to say how many people have received warning notices like those delivered to Streever and Gonyea. That leaves the public without a full accounting of how often federal agents used the form, what internal standard triggered its use, who approved the practice, what records were created around recipients, and whether other people changed their speech after federal officers appeared at their homes or workplaces.

Those questions are more urgent now because one recipient has taken the government to court and won preliminary protection from the mechanism used against him. Streever’s order does not erase what happened at his home, undo the night he spent preparing his daughter for another possible federal encounter, or resolve what happened to everyone else who may have received a similar warning. It establishes that his constitutional challenge is likely to succeed and prevents DHS from continuing to hold that warning over his protected political speech while the case proceeds.

Streever said after the ruling that he was relieved the court affirmed his right to speak his conscience and criticize government officials. For him, that protection came only after federal agents had already entered his family’s life and after he went to court to stop the government from using the warning against him. The remaining accountability question reaches beyond his individual injunction: whether DHS will disclose the full reach of the warning-notice practice, what happens to other recipients, and whether political criticism of ICE was subjected to federal scrutiny in cases the public still does not know about.

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Previous AAI report:
ICE Is Serving Warning Notices to Americans Who Criticize It.

The confrontation unfolded after residents and rapid-response activists learned that immigration agents had been operating in the neighborhood. Reporting on the incident documented agents grabbing and pushing protesters, and Maryland Matters reported that at least one federal agent struck a person on the ground with a baton. The full video now circulating from the scene captures more than the physical confrontation itself. It records people asking, in real time, why local police were not stopping what they believed was an assault on members of their community.

Those demands matter because Frederick police were physically present, but city officials later said the department had not been notified beforehand and was not involved in planning or carrying out the federal operation. Frederick Police Chief Kevin Meyer said local officers asked ICE whether agents had a warrant. According to Meyer, ICE would not discuss it.

That refusal left one of the most basic questions surrounding the operation unanswered. People in the video repeatedly insist that there was no warrant, but the public record does not yet establish whether ICE had a judicial warrant, an administrative warrant, or some other authority. What is established is that local police say they asked and federal agents would not tell them. For residents watching people in their neighborhood pushed and struck by federal officers, that distinction is not abstract. It goes directly to the authority being exercised against them and the ability of local officials to explain what happened afterward.

The footage also shows how quickly the confrontation became a demand for protection. Protesters shout at police to “do your job” and “protect the people,” while identifying families in the area and accusing officers of standing by as people were pushed, hit, and thrown. At one point, someone in the crowd identifies a person involved as a teenager and demands that agents stay away from him. The person’s age has not been independently verified, but the statement captures the fear and urgency of the scene.

Frederick police have emphasized that they were outside the federal chain of command and were not part of ICE’s operation. That explains part of the institutional divide, but it does not settle what responsibility local officers had once the confrontation was unfolding in front of them. Protesters accused police at the scene of protecting ICE and failing to intervene. Whether Frederick officers had a specific legal duty to physically stop federal agents remains unresolved, but the public-accountability question is broader than a single legal duty: what were local officers instructed to do when they saw force being used against residents, and what did they document afterward?

There were no arrests at the scene by Frederick police, and city officials said no federal arrest was made there either. That makes the force itself even more central to the public record. If no one was being taken into custody at that location, what operational objective justified the level of physical confrontation captured on video? What federal use-of-force policy governed the baton strikes, pushing, and grabbing? Has ICE or the Department of Homeland Security opened an internal review, and if so, who is conducting it and when will its findings be public?

Those questions have already prompted demands for investigation. Frederick officials have called for answers, while civil-rights organizations have called for an independent review of ICE’s conduct. Rep. April McClain Delaney also called for a full and transparent investigation after reports of federal agents using force against Frederick residents. Witnesses and community members have urged Maryland authorities to examine what happened, while reporting immediately after the confrontation indicated that the Maryland Attorney General’s Office had not publicly announced an investigation.

The accountability gap extends beyond ICE. Frederick police officers were on the scene, which means body-camera footage, dispatch records, incident reports, internal communications, and instructions given to officers could help establish what local authorities saw and what they did while federal agents confronted protesters. Whether that material has been released publicly, whether the department has conducted its own review, and whether any officer’s conduct has been examined remain central questions ten days later.

The same is true at the federal level. There has been no public accounting establishing what warrant authority ICE relied on, why agents refused to discuss that authority with local police, what use-of-force review followed the confrontation, or whether any federal officer has faced discipline. The existence of viral video cannot substitute for that record. The footage establishes what people in Frederick experienced; accountability requires institutions to explain why it happened, under what authority, and what consequences follow.

For the people who were there, those questions began before the cameras stopped recording. They were asking police to protect them while the confrontation was still happening. They were asking about a warrant while federal agents were still in the neighborhood. They were demanding answers before elected officials, civil-rights groups, and news organizations began asking the same questions days later.

Ten days after force was used against people in Frederick, the video is public. The central accountability record is not. Residents and protesters who were pushed, struck, and forced back still do not have clear public answers about the authority ICE relied on, why local police could not get that information, or who is responsible for determining whether the force captured on camera was consistent with federal policy. Until those questions are answered, the confrontation remains more than a ten-day-old video. It remains an unresolved public record of federal power used against a community without a clear accounting of who will answer for it.

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Democratic lawmakers are now demanding that DHS and Customs and Border Protection turn over records tied to the Erie County investigation into Nurul Amin Shah Alam’s death. The September 4 demand from Democratic lawmakers puts federal cooperation under renewed scrutiny as local authorities continue examining the circumstances surrounding his release and the decisions that preceded his death.

Nurul was a 56-year-old Rohingya refugee with legal status in the United States. He was nearly blind, had mobility problems, spoke little to no English, and was not equipped for the freezing conditions he encountered after leaving federal custody. Congressional records state that DHS agents released him outside a closed Tim Hortons in Buffalo without notifying his family or attorney. Five days later, on February 24, he was found dead.

The Erie County Medical Examiner completed its investigation on March 31 and determined that Nurul died from complications of a perforated duodenal ulcer precipitated by hypothermia and dehydration. His manner of death was classified as homicide. That finding turned the circumstances of his release into more than a question about federal procedure: it placed Nurul’s death inside an active accountability process that local authorities are still pursuing.

The Erie County District Attorney’s Office requested the autopsy report and additional medical records after the homicide ruling and began reviewing the evidence surrounding Nurul’s death. District Attorney Mike Keane said his office would examine the medical examiner’s findings while preserving the integrity of the investigation. By September, congressional officials said that investigation remained ongoing.

That unresolved investigation is now the center of a new confrontation over federal records. Rep. Tim Kennedy of New York was joined in Buffalo by House Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson, Border Security and Enforcement Subcommittee Ranking Member Lou Correa, and Rep. Nellie Pou. Kennedy and Thompson also sent a formal letter demanding that DHS provide any information requested by Erie County law enforcement in connection with Nurul’s death.

Kennedy has accused DHS of failing to provide meaningful records to congressional investigators, the New York Attorney General’s office, and Erie County authorities. Thompson and the other lawmakers are also pressing the department to cooperate fully with the local homicide investigation. Those accusations place DHS’s handling of records and requests for information directly inside the accountability fight surrounding Nurul’s death.

New York Attorney General Letitia James had previously examined the case before determining that her office lacked authority to prosecute and referring the matter to the Erie County District Attorney. According to the September congressional release, CBP declined to provide information and records sought during that inquiry. The lawmakers are now demanding that federal agencies cooperate with the local investigation that remains active.

According to congressional records, DHS initially took Nurul into custody after wrongly believing he lacked legal status. Once his lawful status was confirmed, federal agents released him, turning what began as an immigration-status error into a release decision that is now part of the homicide investigation.

For Americans Against ICE, the accountability cannot stop at the fact that a medical examiner used the word homicide. The investigation must be able to establish what federal agents knew about Nurul’s condition, how the decision to release him was made, what records document that decision, and why local investigators and members of Congress are still demanding information months after his death.

The case has already produced one proposed policy response. Kennedy introduced the DHS Release Transparency Act in June, legislation that would require ICE and CBP to notify a detainee’s designated point of contact before release from federal custody. The proposal directly addresses one of the failures identified after Nurul disappeared: his family was not told where he had been released.

But legislation does not answer what happened in Nurul’s case. His death was ruled a homicide. The Erie County investigation remains unresolved. Democratic lawmakers are now demanding the records they say are necessary for that investigation to move forward.

Nurul’s family has already lived through the consequences of his release and the five days that followed. What remains is an accounting of the decisions that placed a nearly blind, disabled refugee outside in freezing conditions and whether the institutions that held those records will provide investigators what they need to determine responsibility.

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The charge prosecutors reportedly wanted was deprivation of rights under color of law, a federal civil-rights offense addressing abuses committed through government authority. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Evans later told lawyers for Sosa-Celis and other victims that the decision was being directed by Main Justice and the U.S. attorney. Evans wrote that he had objected “in the strongest possible terms” but was overruled.

The federal case that moved forward instead focuses on what Castro allegedly told the FBI after the shooting. A grand jury indicted him on six counts of making materially false statements about the Jan. 14 encounter. DOJ says Castro told investigators that he had been attacked with a broom and snow shovel and had fought on the ground for roughly three minutes. One count alleges that the interaction he described lasted about 11 seconds.

Those charges address Castro’s account after Sosa-Celis was shot. The civil-rights prosecution Minnesota prosecutors reportedly prepared would have put Castro’s use of force under direct federal criminal scrutiny. DOJ leadership stopped that route while prosecutors proceeded on the alleged lies instead.

Katie Phang, a former prosecutor and legal journalist, argued that this substantially weakens the federal accountability path. She said prosecutors should be able to pursue the most serious charge supported by the evidence and criticized DOJ leadership for overruling the Minnesota prosecutors. Her point was direct: the government is prosecuting Castro over what he allegedly said after the shooting while the use of force that injured Sosa-Celis is not part of the current federal case.

Sosa-Celis had already suffered consequences from the account that followed the shooting. Minnesota prosecutors say Castro fired through the closed door of a Minneapolis home and struck him in the leg. Castro accused Sosa-Celis and another man of assaulting him with a broom and shovel, but surveillance footage later contradicted key parts of that account, and charges against the men were dropped.

Minnesota prosecutors subsequently charged Castro with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime. Castro was arrested by Texas Rangers in May, but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott did not sign the paperwork needed to return him to Minnesota during the 90-day detention period. Castro was released from the Texas jail while Minnesota’s charges remained pending.

That state case remains open. Castro has since surrendered to federal authorities and now faces six counts tied to statements he allegedly made to investigators. DOJ says each count carries a maximum penalty of five years if he is convicted.

DOJ says it is still evaluating the evidence and has not ruled out additional charges. But the civil-rights prosecution Minnesota prosecutors reportedly sought has not been filed. Evans told lawyers representing Sosa-Celis and other victims that he fought that decision and lost.

For Sosa-Celis, the accountability gap remains plain. He was shot in the leg, the account used to justify what happened to him was later contradicted by evidence, and federal prosecutors reportedly believed Castro’s use of force warranted a civil-rights prosecution. The federal government is now prosecuting Castro for what he allegedly said afterward while the act that put a bullet in Sosa-Celis’s leg remains outside the current federal case.

Americans Against ICE documents cases like Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis’s, tracks accountability failures inside the systems protecting ICE agents, and provides funds and resources to people and families directly impacted by immigration enforcement. Upgrade to a paid subscription to help sustain that work.

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Reporting and source material: ProPublica, Katie Phang / MeidasTouch, U.S. Department of Justice, and Minnesota Reformer.

Friends and classmates of Pierre Damas Bel stood outside the Clark County Courthouse carrying his photographs and memorial boards while demanding an end to ICE ankle monitoring. Their action centered the young man they knew and the government tracking device Pierre had said brought shame and humiliation into the life he was trying to build.

Pierre was 20 years old. He had graduated with honors from Springfield High School, played soccer, participated in Junior ROTC and entered Wright State University with plans for his future. He had come to the United States pursuing an education, and his family and community described a student whose life in Ohio was still taking shape.

On July 29, Immigration and Customs Enforcement fitted Pierre with a GPS ankle monitor while his immigration proceedings continued. ICE has confirmed that he entered the United States with government permission in 2024 through the CBP One process. The agency’s surveillance was physically attached to Pierre’s body as he moved through college and daily life.

Pierre documented the effect himself. He wrote publicly about the shame of wearing the monitor and emphasized that he had come to the United States to study, not to commit crimes. His father, Pierre Ronal Bel, later said Pierre was embarrassed to wear the device around classmates and sought to have it removed.

His family says the damage deepened. Pierre’s father said his son felt degraded by the monitor and became increasingly distressed. Family members and advocates said it interfered with activities that mattered to him, including soccer, while his father said Pierre was also being bullied because he wore it.

🎥 Friends and community members speak for Pierre Damas Bel at the courthouse gathering.

Pierre’s experience unfolded inside a wider expansion of electronic monitoring in Springfield’s Haitian community. Ohio public-media reporting found that hundreds of Haitian immigrants in the city had been ordered to wear GPS devices as their immigration protections changed. Pierre’s friend Yola Lamarre publicly condemned the practice as dehumanizing and called for the program to end.

On August 31, Pierre called his father in distress. His father said Pierre told him he was struggling mentally because of the bullying and was urged to come home so they could talk. Pierre later stopped along Interstate 70, entered traffic and was struck by a tractor-trailer. The Ohio State Highway Patrol said he died at the scene and that the death remained under investigation. His family has described his death as suicide.

Pierre’s family has connected his deterioration to what happened after ICE placed the monitor on him. His father said Pierre felt as though he was being treated “like an animal” and believes the despair surrounding the device contributed to his death. That causal judgment remains the family’s account, while the record establishes that ICE imposed the monitor, Pierre publicly described its effect on him, and his father said Pierre was seeking relief before he died.

At the courthouse, Pierre’s friends and classmates made that history impossible to bury inside immigration paperwork. They carried his photographs, demanded justice in his name and called for the ankle-monitor program to end. Their protest confronted the same system Pierre had described as degrading while he was still alive.

ICE has rejected responsibility for Pierre’s death while confirming that it placed him under electronic monitoring during his immigration case. The agency’s denial does not alter Pierre’s own documented account of living with the device or his family’s description of what happened to him while he wore it.

The accountability question now extends beyond the decision to monitor one student. Pierre’s case shows what happens when immigration surveillance is attached to a person’s body and carried into school, athletics, friendships and every other part of ordinary life. His friends and classmates are demanding an end to a system that can publicly mark immigrants with a device associated with criminal punishment even when they have not been convicted of a crime.

Pierre came to the United States to pursue an education and a future. His friends are now standing outside a courthouse holding photographs of the young man who should have been continuing that life, and they are demanding that another person not be forced to carry the same burden he described before his death.

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The harm began before the flight left Louisiana. On June 11, 18 migrants were brought to Alexandria Airport handcuffed and shackled. Several said they were severely beaten. Two said that after refusing to board the ICE deportation flight, they were forced into full-body restraints. A U.S. official denied the beating allegations.

Some of the people on that flight did not even know where the government was taking them. One migrant said she discovered the destination only after seeing “Bangui, Central African Republic” on the screen in front of her seat and trying to figure out where it was. Others told reporters they had never set foot in Africa before. They were being forcibly removed to a country they had not chosen and did not know.

Once in the Central African Republic, the uncertainty did not end. Migrants described living with little electricity, heavy mosquito exposure, malaria, and fear about leaving where they were staying. Their visas were temporary, and they said they did not know what would happen when that period expired. Some remained terrified that they could ultimately be sent back to the countries they had fled in the first place.

That is what makes third-country deportation more than a change in destination. In cases like these, a protection order can block direct removal to a country where a person faces danger while still leaving the government another route: transfer to a different country willing to accept them. The legal protection remains tied to one destination, while the person can still be forcibly displaced somewhere else.

The arrangements behind those removals are largely hidden from the public. The transcript describes U.S. diplomats traveling to the Central African Republic shortly before the first deportation flight and notes a sharp increase in American funding connected to migration and humanitarian operations there: $85 million to IOM operations and another $50 million to the CAR Humanitarian Fund. The available record does not establish that those funds were direct payment for accepting deportees, but the timing and secrecy surrounding the agreements create a clear accountability question about how U.S. money and diplomatic leverage are being used to build this deportation system.

The Central African Republic is not an isolated destination. Fresher independent verification shows the Trump administration has entered into more than 35 third-country agreements and forcibly transferred more than 23,000 people to 26 third countries. The transcript also describes a system using tariffs, visa restrictions, economic investment, military and security aid, and humanitarian assistance to persuade governments to accept third-country nationals.

The larger accountability question is no longer whether this is happening. It is how far the system has spread, who negotiated the agreements, what leverage or funding was used to secure them, and what responsibility the United States accepts after forcing people into countries they never chose and may not be safe in. For immigrants who already won protection from return to persecution or torture, third-country deportation creates a government-built route around the safety they fought to secure in U.S. courts.

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Sources: Democracy Now!, CNN, Human Rights First, Refugees International, U.S. Department of State.

Lianyong Wei was 51 years old when ICE took custody of him in Saipan on August 22. By the next morning, a corrections officer found him unresponsive inside the Northern Mariana Islands Department of Corrections facility. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead. What happened during the short stretch of time between ICE assuming custody of a living man and Wei being found unresponsive has not been fully explained.

ICE had responsibility for Wei while he was confined, yet key details about his condition after intake remain publicly unanswered. The agency had not disclosed whether he received the medical screening expected after entering custody, whether he reported symptoms or distress, when he was last observed responsive, or what monitoring occurred before the morning check that ended with him being rushed to emergency care.

Those missing answers matter because custody creates control. Wei could not choose his own medical provider, leave the facility, or independently seek help once ICE assumed responsibility for his confinement. His access to care, observation, emergency intervention, and documentation depended on the system holding him. When someone dies under those conditions within hours of admission, the record of what happened inside that facility becomes an accountability question, not an administrative detail.

ICE has said a corrections officer found Wei unresponsive during morning checks and that emergency aid followed before he was transported to the hospital. The cause of his death remains under investigation. What remains unresolved is the condition Wei was in before that morning check, whether warning signs were documented, and whether anyone inside the facility recognized those signs before he was found unresponsive.

The public disclosure of Wei’s death raises a separate accountability issue. Northern Mariana Islands authorities announced his death on August 24, while ICE did not publicly announce it until more than a week after he died. The agency responsible for his immigration custody was therefore not the first institution to tell the public that a man had died after spending only hours under its control. That delay strengthens the demand for a complete record of his detention, medical care, emergency response, and death.

Wei’s death sits inside a growing record of people dying while held by the federal immigration system. Associated Press tracking identified him as at least the fifth Chinese national to die in ICE or Border Patrol custody since March 2025, while dozens of deaths have been recorded across ICE detention since early 2025. That pattern gives Wei’s death broader significance without replacing the individual facts of what happened to him.

Chinese consular officials have called for a thorough investigation, disclosure of the findings, assistance for Wei’s family, and steps to prevent another death. Those demands do not replace the obligation already created by ICE custody. Wei entered that system alive, and the government that confined him now owes a full account of what happened from intake through the moment he was found unresponsive.

Lianyong Wei died after spending only hours in ICE custody. Until the medical records, monitoring timeline, emergency-response record, and cause-of-death findings are released, ICE still owes a complete account of Wei’s treatment and care while he was under its control.

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Every person pushed through ICE detention, deportation, electronic monitoring or removal encounters more than a federal agency. Behind the agents and detention facilities sits a commercial network of prison companies, lenders, transportation providers, technology firms, surveillance vendors and other contractors whose money and services help immigration enforcement operate across the country.

Laura Berlin, an independent researcher who began tracing ICE-linked companies and financial relationships through public records in 2025, created “Who is Profiting from ICE?” as an interactive database and map. The project assembled those connections into a searchable record of the companies and institutions tied to the machinery of detention and deportation.

The significance of the project grew when organizers began using that information to identify financial pressure points. Instead of treating ICE as an enforcement apparatus isolated inside the federal government, the database made visible the businesses and financial institutions whose contracts, credit and services helped sustain a system that confines, monitors and removes immigrants.

Citizens Bank became one of the clearest examples. The bank maintained financing relationships with GEO Group and CoreCivic, two major private detention companies that contract with ICE. Organizers began targeting Citizens over those relationships through demonstrations, customer withdrawal campaigns, municipal pressure and other public actions.

The financial consequences became substantial. Jersey City announced that it would withdraw $265 million from Citizens Bank over its financing ties to GEO Group and CoreCivic. Montclair, New Jersey, later voted to remove another $90 million. Organizers also collected individual withdrawal pledges while expanding demonstrations across the East Coast and beyond.

By June, roughly 140 protests had been planned across 17 states. Berlin’s database, once a relatively small research project, had surged to nearly 10 million visits as public attention to ICE intensified following the January 2026 killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers.

Citizens announced in July that it would exit the credit facilities involving GEO Group and CoreCivic. The decision followed months of organized pressure and municipal withdrawals totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, while changes inside the detention industry were also reducing the companies’ dependence on traditional bank financing.

CoreCivic, for example, sold two California detention facilities to the Department of Homeland Security for $1.5 billion. The transaction transferred ownership to the federal government while CoreCivic expected to continue operating facilities under ICE agreements, leaving the company embedded in a detention system whose consequences are borne by the immigrants held inside it even as the financing structure around that system changes.

Berlin’s database expanded beyond detention operators to trace major corporations including AT&T, Comcast, Dell, Deloitte, FedEx, Motorola and Palantir. As those connections became easier to examine, the project itself entered Department of Homeland Security intelligence reporting. A February DHS intelligence bulletin obtained by USA TODAY specifically referenced the website and was issued under HSEC SIN 8 — Homeland Security Standing Information Need 8, an intelligence category used for domestic-terrorism threat reporting.

The bulletin discussed anti-ICE activity alongside warnings about potential violence by what DHS described as anarchist extremists, while also acknowledging that some of the activity it described was protected by the First Amendment. Berlin’s project consisted of organizing publicly available information about government contracts, corporate relationships and political ties into a form that people could search and use to understand who was helping sustain the enforcement system affecting immigrant families and communities.

That federal scrutiny landed after the database had already shown how public records could become leverage. Organizers moved from generalized opposition to targeted pressure against specific institutions financing or servicing detention infrastructure. Customers could withdraw money, municipalities could reconsider banking relationships, and campaigns could confront corporations whose role in detaining, surveilling or facilitating the removal of immigrants had previously remained scattered across contracts and filings.

The results exposed pressure points inside ICE’s private support system. Immigration enforcement depends on companies with customers, investors, lenders, reputations and political relationships outside the detention system itself. Those dependencies create places where organized public pressure can produce financial consequences against institutions helping sustain machinery that directly affects people subjected to detention and deportation.

DHS intelligence reporting added another mechanism to that record. A project designed to make government and corporate relationships easier to understand became an object of federal security attention after people began using those relationships to organize against ICE-linked institutions and the infrastructure surrounding immigrant detention and removal.

For Americans Against ICE, the significance is larger than any single company or campaign. Berlin’s research traced federal contracts, corporate financing and campaign contributions across an enforcement system whose consequences fall on immigrants and their families, while the government agency overseeing ICE placed the public-facing research used to examine those connections inside domestic-terrorism intelligence reporting. The same record that exposed where private money intersects with federal enforcement also documented what happened when people began using that information to demand consequences.

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Catherine Cool should be preparing for the birth of her first child with her husband beside her. Instead, Heriberto “Eddie” Reyes-Ochoa is being held in ICE custody at the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, after a minor traffic crash with no injuries pulled him out of the life they had spent nearly two decades building together. Catherine is pregnant, their baby is due in January, and the man who supported her through law school, the death of her father and years of trying to conceive is now locked away from the home where they expected to begin their next chapter as parents.

The separation happened quickly. On Aug. 21, Eddie was driving to his job at a marine construction company when he was involved in a wreck. No one was injured. A Mississippi state trooper cited him for following too closely and driving without a license, something undocumented immigrants cannot obtain under Mississippi law. Catherine was there when the trooper told Eddie he had an immigration warrant. What began as a roadside encounter over two traffic misdemeanors ended with Eddie being taken to the Hancock County Jail on an immigration hold and eventually transferred into federal immigration detention.

For Catherine, the consequences were immediate. She had graduated from law school only months earlier, after years in which Eddie had been the primary provider supporting their household while she studied. Her father had died the previous year, and Catherine said Eddie had carried her through that loss. Then came the pregnancy they had almost stopped believing would happen. After years of struggling to conceive, Catherine learned she was pregnant a week after graduating. Eddie’s detention arrived just as the future they had worked toward together was finally beginning to take shape.

That future had already required years of navigating the immigration system. Eddie came to the United States as a teenager in 2006 and eventually made a life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He met Catherine while they were both young, and the two later married. Rather than avoiding immigration authorities, they spent years disclosing Eddie’s status to the government while pursuing a legal pathway for him to leave the United States briefly, complete consular processing and return with lawful permanent residency.

Their progress was substantial. The couple secured approval of an I-130 Petition for Alien Relative, establishing Catherine, a U.S. citizen, as Eddie’s qualifying spouse. They then pursued an I-601A provisional unlawful-presence waiver, which was approved after roughly three years of waiting. The final major step was the DS-260 immigrant visa application. Catherine submitted that form on the same day Eddie was arrested.

The contradiction now sits at the center of their family’s crisis. Eddie and Catherine had spent years doing what the immigration system required of them, disclosing his status, filing petitions and waiting through each stage of the process. Yet before that process could reach its conclusion, a minor crash became the opening through which local law enforcement delivered Eddie into ICE custody.

That transfer was not an isolated accident of bureaucracy. The Mississippi Department of Public Safety, which oversees the Highway Patrol, and the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office both participate in the federal 287(g) program. Through those agreements, local law-enforcement agencies assist federal immigration enforcement, creating a pipeline through which encounters that begin as state or local matters can end in ICE detention.

For Eddie, that pipeline turned two traffic citations into the loss of his freedom and separation from his pregnant wife. He was taken first to the Hancock County Jail and later transferred to Adams County Correctional Center, leaving Catherine to return home without him. Their immigration paperwork was still moving and their baby was still coming, but Eddie was no longer home to share either part of the future he and Catherine had spent years preparing for.

The government then made the harm worse by publicly attaching a serious criminal allegation to Eddie that local authorities said was false. When the Mississippi Free Press asked ICE about his detention, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson claimed Eddie had been charged with felony hit and run in addition to driving without a license and following too closely.

Hancock County officials told the publication that Eddie had never been charged with felony hit and run. The charges against him were the two misdemeanors arising from the crash. Catherine had been present at the scene and knew Eddie had not fled from it. After the Mississippi Free Press confronted ICE with the county’s account, DHS returned with a revised statement. The felony allegation had disappeared.

That correction matters because the false allegation transformed the public description of Eddie’s arrest. A minor crash with no injuries was initially presented by the federal government as a felony hit-and-run case. The revised statement removed that claim only after it was challenged, leaving behind a documented example of how quickly an immigrant already in government custody could be publicly branded with a serious criminal accusation that had never been filed.

DHS continued to defend Eddie’s detention after correcting the felony allegation. The department said a pending immigration application does not confer legal status and stated that Eddie would remain in ICE custody while removal proceedings continued. Its response also invoked the administration’s broader claim that immigration enforcement is focused on the “worst of the worst.”

Eddie’s actual circumstances tell a different story. He had not been arrested for a violent offense. He had not been charged with the felony DHS initially attributed to him. He was working, married to a U.S. citizen, living openly in Mississippi and moving through an immigration process that had already produced major approvals. ICE nevertheless caged him after a minor crash and left Catherine to continue their pregnancy and household without him.

The detention has also forced Eddie and Catherine into another legal fight before they could complete the immigration process they had spent years pursuing. Eddie’s attorney, Brandon Riches, said he intends to file a habeas corpus petition challenging the detention and seeking a path toward judicial review and release. Riches has argued that Eddie’s long-established life in Mississippi, his marriage, years of immigration filings and Catherine’s pregnancy all weigh against keeping him locked away while the government decides his future.

That fight is unfolding against a much larger struggle over mandatory immigration detention. A 2025 Board of Immigration Appeals decision broadened the government’s use of mandatory detention for people who entered the United States without inspection, making bond far harder to obtain for many immigrants regardless of how long they have lived in the country or how deeply rooted their families have become.

The consequences of that policy are not abstract in Eddie’s case. Mandatory detention means Catherine cannot simply ask an immigration judge to look at their marriage, Eddie’s work history, the approvals already obtained in his immigration case, her pregnancy and their home in Mississippi and decide whether keeping him caged serves any legitimate purpose. The system can separate them first, then force the family to fight for a judge to review that detention.

A federal appeals fight has challenged that structure. In July, a Fifth Circuit panel held that people subjected to this type of mandatory detention have due-process rights and should receive bond hearings within 90 days. The full court later vacated that decision and agreed to reconsider the question. While judges continue debating the scope of those rights, families like Eddie and Catherine’s continue living with the consequence of detention in real time.

Catherine last saw Eddie at the Hancock County Jail. She said he was wearing orange and his feet were shackled. Eddie cried as they said goodbye. Catherine managed to hold herself together inside the jail, but when she later described what losing him from the household meant, the weight of the separation broke through. “He took care of me,” she said.

That care had shaped the life around them. Eddie was constantly working, both for the household and at home. He tended the garden Catherine is now trying to keep alive, growing papaya, peppers, succulents, cacti, agave, spinach and milkweed that attracted monarch butterflies. Their home is also crowded with the animals they accumulated during years when they thought having children might not happen: dogs, cats, bearded dragons and a parrot. Catherine said their Doberman, Sultan, still goes outside looking for Eddie.

Those details matter because ICE did not remove Eddie from an empty space. It took him out of an established household where another person depended on him, where a child was on the way, where years of immigration paperwork were still progressing and where ordinary responsibilities continued whether Eddie was allowed to come home or not. Catherine has relatives and friends helping her, but the support around her does not erase the person ICE took away.

Their community has begun responding to Eddie’s detention. Catherine’s sister, Savannah Corbitt, wrote publicly about Eddie’s detention, and supporters planned a march at the Bay St. Louis Bridge calling for his return. Their anger is rooted in the same contradiction visible throughout the case: Eddie and Catherine spent years trying to resolve his status through the government’s own process, only to have a minor traffic crash become the event that tore them apart before that process could finish.

Catherine has described the years of immigration paperwork as an uphill battle in which each step forward seemed to be followed by another obstacle. Catherine and Eddie followed the process they were given, filing the required petitions, waiting through years of processing and securing major approvals before reaching the consular stage that could lead Eddie to permanent residency. Catherine submitted the final major application on the same day the government took her husband away.

The harm cannot be reduced to Eddie’s immigration status or the paperwork still pending in his case. Catherine is carrying their child while her husband remains caged hours from home. Eddie is missing the months when they should be preparing together for the birth they spent years hoping would happen. Their immigration process continues under the shadow of detention, and their family now has to fight for something much more immediate than a green card: getting Eddie home.

January will arrive whether ICE releases him or not. Catherine’s pregnancy will continue, their child will be born, and the months ICE has already taken from this family cannot be returned to them. The unresolved question is now painfully simple: after years of following the government’s immigration process, will Eddie Reyes-Ochoa still be sitting inside an ICE detention center when his wife gives birth to the child they waited so long to have?

Upgrade to a paid subscription. Eddie Reyes-Ochoa is in ICE custody while his pregnant wife, Catherine Cool, prepares for the birth of their child without him at home. Your support helps fund Americans Against ICE reporting and direct support for Eddie and other families harmed by immigration detention and deportation.

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Carlos Tellez Sanchez had spent years building a life in Texas before the United States government sent him almost 6,000 miles away from it. The 35-year-old Venezuelan father worked at a Dallas car dealership during the day and made Uber Eats deliveries at night to help support his family. His wife and their 5-month-old U.S.-citizen son remain in the United States. Carlos is now in Liberia, staying more than an hour outside the capital, Monrovia, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed him aboard a removal flight to a country he said he had not even heard of until hours before departure.

His youngest son was born while Carlos was already in ICE custody. Family accounts reported before his deportation said he had been able to meet the baby only through a video call from detention, meaning much of the child’s life had already passed with his father confined before the government widened that separation across the Atlantic. Carlos is a father of three, according to Venezuelan reporting on his case, but the birth of his youngest child during his detention makes the timeline especially stark: federal custody consumed the months in which Carlos otherwise would have been physically present for the beginning of his son’s life.

ICE detained Carlos on December 19, 2025, when he appeared for an immigration check-in. CBS News reported that he had expected the appointment to be routine. Instead, he remained in immigration detention for eight months, moving through ICE custody while his family continued without him. CBS reported that it found no criminal charges or convictions against Carlos beyond civil immigration violations, and DHS did not dispute that he lacked a criminal record when responding to questions about his case.

Carlos’s immigration history also made his eventual destination significant. An immigration judge had granted him withholding of removal to Venezuela in 2021 after finding that he could face persecution there. That protection did not give Carlos lawful permanent status or prevent the government from seeking to deport him altogether; it barred his removal to Venezuela. When ICE ultimately sent him to Liberia instead, the government used the distinction between protection from one country and protection from removal itself to carry out the deportation without returning him to the place the immigration court had determined posed a danger.

The case also sits inside a broader expansion of third-country deportation arrangements, under which people can be removed to nations where they are not citizens and may never have lived. Liberia announced on August 18 that it had agreed to accept as many as 1,200 third-country nationals from the United States over one year, beginning with an initial group of 20. The Liberian government said the arrangement was based on diplomatic notes exchanged in September 2025 and that those transferred could include nationals from Africa and the Western Hemisphere.

Carlos was among the people swept into that new arrangement. Liberia’s first group arrived on August 20, and reporting on Carlos’s case identified him among the deportees sent from the United States. The government of Liberia has described the arrangement as humanitarian and said transferred migrants may seek asylum there. It has also said they can receive support while determining what comes next. Those assurances begin only after a person has already been removed from the country where their family, employment and established life may exist.

For Carlos, the destination was not the product of an existing connection to Liberia. He told CBS News that he learned he was being sent there only hours before the flight and said he had never heard of the country before then. He described spending roughly 15 hours crossing the Atlantic in handcuffs. After arriving, he said he was placed in a hotel in a remote area more than an hour from Monrovia alongside deportees from several other countries and was left trying to understand what future was available to him.

The removal also occurred while Carlos had been challenging his detention. Reporting compiled by the Human Impact Project and Venezuelan outlets said he had an active habeas corpus petition before a federal court in South Texas seeking relief from his continued confinement. His relatives described him as the family’s primary provider and questioned why he remained detained despite having no criminal record. The existence of that litigation did not prevent ICE from placing him on the Liberia flight.

DHS defended its actions. In a statement to CBS News, the department said Carlos had previously been deported from the United States, later crossed the southern border again in 2021 and was subsequently released before his December 2025 detention. DHS also said Carlos had declined several opportunities to be removed to Mexico and maintained that when a person cannot be returned to their home country, the government may seek another country willing to receive them. The department characterized Liberia as a safe third-country destination.

Those claims establish the government’s position, but they do not eliminate the public-interest question raised by the result. Carlos had a court-recognized protection preventing his return to Venezuela, a family living in Texas and an infant son born while he was in ICE detention. The government nevertheless possessed another enforcement pathway: it could identify a third country willing to receive him and carry out the deportation there.

Reuters reported that the United States has increasingly used third-country arrangements involving people who cannot be returned to their countries of origin because immigration judges found they could face torture, persecution, or other abuse there. Liberia’s agreement is among the largest announced arrangements of its kind, and similar deals have been pursued with other African nations. Immigration attorneys and rights organizations have raised concerns about the opacity of these agreements and about what meaningful protection remains when a person barred from being sent home can instead be transferred to an unrelated country.

The Liberia arrangement illustrates how quickly that policy can move from diplomatic language to an individual family’s life. The Liberian government’s announcement speaks of the “transfer” of third-country nationals, migration-system support and the ability to seek protection after arrival. In Carlos’s case, those administrative terms translate into a father who went to an immigration appointment in Texas, spent eight months in detention, missed the birth and early infancy of his youngest son, and then found himself on another continent.

It also exposes the limited practical reach of withholding of removal. Carlos obtained a ruling recognizing that Venezuela was not a permissible destination for his deportation, and the government did not send him there. Yet that protection did not shield his family from prolonged detention or separation, and it did not require the government to leave him in the United States when Liberia became available. The protection remained in force, but it did not prevent the government from using Liberia as an alternative destination.

That is why Carlos’s case matters beyond the technical question of where the United States is legally permitted to send someone. Third-country deportation can turn protection from return to danger into a much narrower promise: the government will not send a person to one prohibited destination, but it may still search for another country willing to receive them. For families already separated by immigration detention, that distinction can determine whether reunification remains physically possible or whether enforcement turns months apart into thousands of miles.

Carlos told CBS that he had no clear plan for what would happen next in Liberia. His wife and infant son remain in the United States, tied to a life from which he has now been physically removed. His son’s first months unfolded while Carlos was behind the walls of immigration detention; the next chapter is beginning with his father across an ocean, in a country that was never part of the family’s life before ICE made it the destination.

Upgrade to a paid subscription. Carlos Tellez Sanchez is nearly 6,000 miles from his wife and infant son after ICE deported him to Liberia. Your support helps fund Americans Against ICE reporting and direct support for Carlos and other families harmed by immigration detention and deportation.

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According to records reviewed by Injustice Watch, an assistant county prosecutor contacted a Homeland Security agent and supplied information about Samayoa. Weeks later, ICE agents surrounded him outside his home as he was preparing to go out. His 17-year-old son saw what was happening and approached. Bogado reported that ICE agents perceived the teenager as a threat and aimed eight guns at him. DHS did not deny that agents pointed weapons at the child and instead issued a statement defending its use-of-force practices.

Americans Against ICE describes what followed as a kidnapping: federal agents took Samayoa and his teenage son into custody after information from his local criminal case had been supplied to federal immigration authorities. Samayoa said he later felt intense pressure to accept voluntary departure and told his son to do the same. Father and son were taken out of Illinois, flown through El Paso and ultimately crossed into Ciudad Juárez before making their way toward Chiapas. The rest of the family later reunited with them in Mexico.

Samayoa’s case sits inside a much larger record uncovered by Bogado’s investigations for Injustice Watch. Local police departments, sheriffs, prosecutors and other officials in more than one-third of Illinois counties were documented sharing information or taking actions that helped federal immigration authorities flag, locate, detain or deport at least 150 people. Bogado said she spent months speaking not only with officials and reviewing records, but with more than 20 people caught in those systems and their families. Some of the children she spoke with continued contacting her because they missed fathers who had been deported.

The findings expose a form of immigration cooperation that does not always require a local officer to physically hand someone over to ICE. Information itself can become the handoff. Bogado found evidence in roughly one in six Illinois counties that prosecutors or their staffs shared information with federal immigration authorities. Some responded to federal requests, while others initiated contact themselves. The information could include court appearances, release timing, police records and details that could help agents determine when or where to find someone.

That distinction matters in a state whose laws were designed to restrict local participation in federal civil immigration enforcement. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s guidance says the TRUST Act generally prohibits state and local law enforcement from participating in immigration enforcement and emphasizes that federal requests for local assistance are requests rather than obligations. The law reflects a basic separation: federal authorities enforce federal civil immigration law, while state and local officers operate under Illinois authority. For families like Samayoa’s, however, the practical protection offered by that separation depends in part on what local institutions do with information capable of leading federal agents to someone’s home.

Yet the investigations show that restricting direct participation does not necessarily stop information from moving through interconnected law-enforcement systems. Daniel Torres Perez’s case illustrates how quickly that can happen. Body-camera footage obtained by Bogado showed an April 2025 traffic stop in which an Illinois officer ran Torres Perez’s name and soon became involved in communications concerning federal immigration authorities. The recorded exchange referenced an ICE warrant while also establishing that Torres Perez had an active state DUI bench warrant.

Bogado described the underlying data route as information passing from local dispatch to Illinois State Police, then to the FBI and DHS, where federal immigration information could be detected and routed back toward the officer in real time. Torres Perez was later deported and never returned to his Illinois family, she said. The active state DUI bench warrant supplied an independent criminal basis for custody. The body-camera record still shows immigration information entering the stop through interconnected law-enforcement systems.

Whether the TRUST Act applies to state’s attorneys and their staffs remains disputed. Injustice Watch found disagreement among Illinois prosecutors over whether their offices fall under all of the law’s restrictions. Some offices have treated themselves as covered and restricted cooperation with ICE; others have taken a different legal view. Attorney General Raoul has not supplied a categorical answer resolving every circumstance.

That uncertainty does not erase the underlying conduct documented in the records. Prosecutor offices possessed information generated through local criminal cases and, in some instances, supplied it to federal immigration officials who could use it to locate defendants. Other Illinois offices operating under the same statewide laws made different choices, including limiting federal access or declining comparable cooperation. For people like Samayoa, those local decisions were not administrative details: information from his criminal case reached federal immigration authorities before agents came to his home. The contrast between offices matters because it shows that local choices shaped what federal authorities received and when they received it.

The statewide record also raises questions about oversight above the county level. In her Democracy Now interview, Bogado said Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office and Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly did not respond to her requests for comment. She said more than 60 offices or agencies failed to respond to repeated requests during the investigation. That leaves significant public questions unanswered about how Illinois monitors practices that can undermine the protections its leaders publicly describe.

For Rolando Perez Samayoa, the consequences were not theoretical questions about jurisdiction, databases or statutory definitions. Information from the local system handling his criminal case reached federal immigration authorities; weeks later agents came to his home, his teenage son faced eight guns, and both were ultimately removed from the United States. Across Illinois, Bogado’s reporting documents other families living with versions of that same consequence. The accountability question is therefore larger than whether Illinois has a law restricting cooperation with ICE. It is whether those protections can meaningfully shield immigrant families when information held by local institutions can still become a route for federal immigration enforcement.

Rolando Perez Samayoa came to Illinois believing its immigrant protections would help keep his family safe. Information from the local criminal case against him was later shared with federal immigration authorities. Weeks afterward, ICE agents surrounded him outside his home, and Bogado reported that they aimed eight guns at his 17-year-old son before father and son were taken into custody.

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Sources

Injustice Watch — Illinois promised to protect immigrants. Local officials helped deport them anyway. Read source
Democracy Now! — Illinois Is a Sanctuary State, But Cops & Prosecutors Still Secretly Work with ICE Watch / read source
WIRED / Injustice Watch — The County Prosecutors Who Became ICE Informants Read source
Illinois Attorney General — TRUST Act and Immigration-Enforcement Guidance Read guidance

Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg during an ICE operation in North Minneapolis on Jan. 14, 2026. According to the criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County, ICE agent Christian Castro fired one round toward the front door of a home after Sosa-Celis and others had gone inside. Four adults and two children were in the house. Investigators traced the bullet through the door and interior structures before it lodged in a bedroom wall identified by Minnesota officials as a child’s room.

In the aftermath of the shooting, federal prosecutors initially charged Sosa-Celis and another man with assaulting federal officers, relying in part on Castro’s account that he had been struck repeatedly with a broom and snow shovel before firing. That prosecution later collapsed. Federal prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges after acknowledging that newly discovered evidence was materially inconsistent with allegations supporting the case.

Minnesota investigators reached a different account of what happened outside the home. The criminal complaint says city-camera footage, witness statements, physical evidence and medical records contradicted material parts of Castro’s description of the encounter. Medical records documented an abrasion near his thumb but no demonstrable trauma consistent with the repeated blows he described. Prosecutors later charged Castro with four felony counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and one misdemeanor count of falsely reporting a crime. Those charges remain pending and have not been adjudicated.

The evidentiary reversal matters because Sosa-Celis went from being shot during an ICE operation to being accused by the federal government of attacking the agent who fired the shot. Once the federal case against him and the other man was dismissed with prejudice, the accountability question shifted toward Castro’s conduct and the accuracy of the account used against the people inside the home. The Minnesota complaint also says federal authorities stopped cooperating with state investigators and prevented additional interviews of Castro and other ICE agents after an initial joint investigation.

City surveillance footage from Jan. 14 shows the sequence outside the North Minneapolis home where Julio Sosa-Celis was shot.

Castro was arrested by Texas Rangers in Cameron County on May 29 under a nationwide Minnesota warrant. Gov. Tim Walz sent Texas Gov. Greg Abbott a formal extradition request on June 2. More than two months later, Abbott had not issued the rendition warrant needed for Minnesota officers to take custody of Castro, prompting Attorney General Keith Ellison to sue in federal court on Aug. 18. Minnesota is asking the court to compel the extradition process and prevent Castro from being released before he can be returned to face the charges.

Abbott is now fighting that request. In an Aug. 24 filing, he argued that Texas still has “serious concerns” about whether Castro legally qualifies as a fugitive because available information indicates ICE reassigned him to Texas rather than Castro fleeing Minnesota to avoid prosecution. Abbott also argued that Texas’ 90-day detention limit restricts how long Castro can be held before a governor’s warrant but does not require the governor to decide an extradition request within that same period. A federal court has not resolved that dispute.

For Sosa-Celis, the legal fight in Texas is not an abstract dispute over interstate procedure. The agent charged in connection with his shooting has not yet been returned to Minnesota to appear before the court handling the criminal case. Cameron County Sheriff Manuel Trevino has told the federal court that Castro must be released when the state’s extradition detention period expires unless a court orders otherwise. Minnesota is seeking emergency relief to keep him in custody while the extradition dispute is decided.

Minnesota argues that Abbott’s refusal to issue the warrant departs from the routine extradition practice between the two states. According to the attorney general’s office, Texas processed 11 Minnesota extradition requests during the previous five years, with Abbott signing rendition warrants in roughly 30 days on average. Minnesota says Walz processed 21 Texas requests during the same period and executed two Texas rendition requests after sending the Castro demand. Those figures are part of Minnesota’s argument that this case is being treated differently from ordinary interstate extraditions.

The court fight now sits at the end of a much longer chain of reversals for the people inside the Minneapolis home. After Sosa-Celis was shot during the ICE operation, federal prosecutors charged him and another man; evidence later undermined the account used against them, their charges were dismissed, and Minnesota prosecutors subsequently charged Castro. The unresolved question is whether Castro will now be returned to the state where Sosa-Celis was wounded to face those charges, or whether another institutional barrier will delay his appearance before the Minnesota court.

Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot during an ICE operation. Sosa-Celis and another man inside the home were initially prosecuted, evidence later undermined that case, and the agent now charged in the shooting has still not been returned to Minnesota to face the case.

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🎥 Speaking after the violent ICE arrest in Arlington, Virginia, José Mejía Hernandez describes the attack that left him with severe facial injuries and documented brain trauma.

José Mejía Hernandez was walking toward a bus stop in Arlington, Virginia, on August 11 when federal immigration agents came for him from unmarked vehicles. What began as an ordinary morning ended with José in a hospital, his face swollen and bloodied and his brain injured. Medical records later documented a traumatic brain injury and a subarachnoid brain bleed. The physical damage was severe, but ICE’s control over José did not stop when the violence on the street ended.

José says he did not initially know the men approaching him were federal officers. He ran. He says an ICE agent Tasered him in the back, and his memory of what happened next disappears. The next clear chapter in his account is the hospital, where the injuries left on his body exposed the force that had been used against him: deep facial bruising, swelling, cuts, blood, injuries across his body, a brain injury, and bleeding around his brain.

The missing period between the Taser and the hospital is one of the most important parts of the accountability record. José cannot describe everything that happened during that time because his memory stops. ICE controlled the scene while he could no longer account for what was being done to him. He later emerged with neurological injuries serious enough to require days of hospitalization. What force followed the Taser, which officers used it, what footage exists, and how José ended up with a traumatic brain injury and brain bleed remain questions that demand answers because his injuries were not an abstract dispute over immigration policy; they were physical damage carried in his brain, his face, and the rest of his body after ICE took control of him on a public street.

José remained hospitalized for several days while ICE kept him under guard. His attorney said his family did not know where he was during part of that hospitalization. While doctors were treating the injuries left after the arrest, the people closest to José were left without knowing where federal agents had taken him. The violence on the street had become another form of control inside the hospital: José was seriously injured and kept under ICE guard while his family remained without answers about where federal agents had taken him.

That chain did not end when doctors discharged him. ICE placed an ankle monitor on José while he was still recovering from the traumatic brain injury and brain bleed. His doctors had ordered additional neurological imaging, including an MRI, to understand the extent of the damage. The enforcement device ICE attached to his injured body then became an obstacle to that medically ordered care because it had to be removed before the MRI could be completed. Instead of focusing only on healing, José had to confront ICE again simply to continue the medical treatment required after ICE had violently arrested him.

José and the people supporting him had to push immigration authorities to remove the monitor. Mexico’s consul became involved and accompanied him as he sought permission to have the device taken off so doctors could scan his injured brain. Reporting from Univision described José remaining in pain during that process, and his lawyers characterized aspects of his treatment as torture. The cruelty was cumulative: ICE violently arrested José, and he emerged with documented neurological trauma; ICE then kept control over him while he was hospitalized, attached electronic surveillance to his body after discharge, and forced him to navigate the same enforcement apparatus simply to continue medically ordered care.

That continuity is what makes José’s case a record of state terror rather than only a record of one brutal arrest. The terror is in the sequence: federal agents arriving from unmarked vehicles, sudden seizure, a Taser, catastrophic bodily injury, missing memory, family unable to locate him, hospital guard, electronic monitoring, interference with neurological care, and continued removal pressure while he was still recovering. José experienced that machinery across the street, the hospital, the ICE office, and his medical recovery, with ICE’s control following him from one stage to the next.

The harm also reaches beyond one person. When immigrant communities watch federal agents move through ordinary streets in unmarked vehicles, take people without warning, use overwhelming force, separate people from family contact, confine them, surveil them, and continue deportation pressure after serious injury, the message is unmistakable: the same machinery can reach them too. That is how state terror expands beyond the body first harmed.

Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, and immigration-rights investigators have documented the same machinery beyond José’s case: violent ICE street arrests, masked or unidentified agents, detention deaths, medical neglect, family separation, surveillance, confinement, and families unable to locate people taken into federal immigration custody. José survived, but others caught inside that detention and deportation machinery have died, making his injuries part of a broader record of violence, neglect, confinement, and death rather than an isolated failure.

ICE has not publicly explained how José emerged from its custody with a traumatic brain injury, a subarachnoid brain bleed, a bloodied and swollen face, widespread bruising, and a missing stretch of memory after the Taser. What happened after the Taser — and what force produced those injuries — remains part of the unanswered record.

Arlington Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti called for an immediate investigation into what happened to José and sought evidence from witnesses, including photographs and video. Rep. Don Beyer also demanded answers. A serious investigation would have to account for the officers involved, the force they used, available body-camera or surveillance footage, use-of-force documentation, hospital custody records, family notification, electronic-monitoring decisions, and the medical consequences José carried afterward. His medical records establish the damage; the unanswered question is what ICE did to him, who participated, what happened during the period his memory cannot recover, and who will answer for the violence that left him with a damaged brain.

José’s case also shows why Americans Against ICE cannot treat immigration enforcement as merely a debate over visas, paperwork, borders, or administrative procedure. State power entered José’s ordinary morning through unmarked vehicles and physical force. It followed him into a hospital, remained attached to his body through electronic monitoring, complicated his medical recovery, and kept removal machinery hanging over him while he was still carrying the injuries. That is an apparatus of state terror operating through one human life: surprise, seizure, violence, injury, isolation, surveillance, medical interference, and deportation pressure applied in sequence.

José is the person forced to live inside that aftermath. He left home expecting to reach a bus stop and came back carrying a traumatic brain injury, a brain bleed, severe facial trauma, injuries across his body, continuing neurological needs, electronic monitoring, and an immigration case that did not stop because he was hurt. While ICE continued its enforcement machinery, José was left trying to recover from the neurological and physical damage it inflicted, making his body the clearest record of what state terror looks like when federal power lands on one person.

José’s body still carries what ICE did to him. Americans Against ICE documents the violence, the machinery behind it, and the people forced to survive its consequences.

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José is still recovering from a traumatic brain injury, a brain bleed, and the physical damage ICE inflicted on him. Medical care, recovery, transportation, and the costs that follow this violence should not be left for José and his family to carry alone.

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More than 5,000 Ethiopian immigrants are losing the federal protection that allowed them to work legally and remain in the United States without being deported. Their home country did not suddenly become safe, and their lives in the United States did not disappear. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security changed their legal status and opened another population to the deportation machinery.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy lifted the remaining court stay blocking DHS from carrying out its termination of Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopia on August 18. The ruling removed the final judicial barrier protecting Ethiopian TPS holders, but the court did not terminate their status. DHS made that decision in December 2025 under then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

That distinction matters. Describing the ruling as a judge “revoking” TPS hides the administration responsible for creating the danger. Murphy’s order allowed Trump’s policy to proceed after the Supreme Court sharply restricted judicial review of TPS terminations. It did not originate the policy.

TPS protected Ethiopian immigrants from deportation and authorized them to work legally in the United States. For anyone without another lawful status, its termination transforms an established life into an enforcement target. A job can be lost when employment authorization disappears. Contact with immigration authorities can lead to detention. Families can be forced to prepare for separation and removal.

The Biden administration first designated Ethiopia for TPS in December 2022 because armed conflict, widespread displacement, climate shocks, and disrupted access to food, water, and healthcare prevented Ethiopian nationals from returning safely. The designation was later extended through December 12, 2025, according to the Federal Register.

Trump’s DHS announced the termination on December 15, 2025, with an effective date of February 13, 2026. The administration claimed conditions in Ethiopia had improved enough to permit safe returns. That assertion remains contested by Ethiopian immigrants and African Communities Together, whose attorneys argue that armed instability and humanitarian danger continue.

The administration’s decision did more than end a temporary program. It withdrew a legal barrier between thousands of people and the immigration-enforcement system. Once TPS protection disappears, immigrants without another status can be arrested, detained, and deported by the same government that previously acknowledged they could not safely return.

African Communities Together and three Ethiopian TPS holders sued the administration in January. In April, Murphy postponed the termination after finding that the plaintiffs were likely to prove DHS disregarded required procedures and that the administration’s explanation appeared pretextual.

The legal landscape changed after the Supreme Court ruled on June 25 that federal law restricts judicial review of nonconstitutional challenges to TPS terminations. The First Circuit then reversed Murphy’s earlier order and returned the Ethiopian case to his court for reconsideration.

Murphy’s August 18 order dismissed the plaintiffs’ statutory, administrative, and procedural due-process claims under the Supreme Court’s controlling decision. He denied their renewed request to postpone the termination and lifted the administrative stay.

One major claim survived. Murphy allowed the plaintiffs’ equal-protection claim alleging racial and national-origin discrimination to move forward into discovery.

That surviving claim keeps the administration’s intent under examination. The plaintiffs argue that Trump’s government has concentrated its TPS terminations on immigrants from nonwhite and non-European countries while disregarding evidence that returning them remains dangerous. The court has not decided whether that allegation is proven, but it found that the claim could proceed.

Ethiopia is not an isolated case. Trump’s administration has moved to terminate TPS protections for immigrants from countries including South Sudan, Somalia, and Myanmar. Reuters reported that DHS has pursued terminations covering at least 13 countries.

Each termination expands the population that ICE can target. The mechanism begins with an administrative announcement, passes through courts whose power to intervene has been narrowed, and ends with immigrants losing work authorization and protection from removal.

DHS celebrated Murphy’s ruling. Department general counsel James Percival declared online that “all TPS terminations are in effect.” African Communities Together warned that the crisis in Ethiopia remains unresolved and that thousands of people are now exposed to severe danger.

The government calls the action a termination of temporary status. Ethiopian immigrants carry the actual consequences: jobs placed at risk, families destabilized, possible detention, and deportation to conditions the United States previously recognized as unsafe.

More than 5,000 Ethiopian immigrants did not suddenly become a threat to the United States. Trump’s administration removed the protection that kept the deportation system from reaching them.

More than 5,000 Ethiopian immigrants now face lost work authorization, family separation, detention, and deportation.

Paid subscriptions help Americans Against ICE provide emergency resources to Ethiopian immigrants and their families, document the harm, and strengthen the support infrastructure that helps keep people safe.

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José’s medical crisis began one day after ICE processed him into Delaney Hall. Medical workers transported him to University Hospital after a nurse witnessed seizure-like activity. ICE released José from custody on July 22, and he later died.

Rep. Rob Menendez brought José’s death into the public record after receiving conflicting information from ICE. DHS has not disclosed the exact date or cause of José’s death, but ICE controlled his confinement when he became critically ill, transferred him to a hospital and changed his custody status before his death.

The Trump administration created the policy opening that allowed ICE to abandon the case. In June, ICE eliminated a 2021 requirement to investigate and report deaths occurring within 30 days of release. The 2021 requirement kept those deaths inside ICE’s investigation and reporting obligations.

🎥 Kevin Ortega-Rojas explains how ICE used Trump’s 30-day reporting rollback to erase José’s death from the public record.

Under the revised policy, ICE no longer monitored, investigated or reported José’s death after releasing him from custody. His medical crisis remained connected to ICE detention, but changing his status removed his death from the agency’s reporting obligations and kept it outside the official custody count.

José is the third person known to have died after being held at Delaney Hall since the facility reopened. Jean Wilson Brutus died following a medical emergency in December, and Edwin Lopez-Cornejo died after another medical emergency in August. José’s case shows how the official count can conceal the full human cost when people who die after release disappear from ICE’s public record.

Under this policy, ICE can transfer a gravely ill person to a hospital, end that person’s custody status and stop monitoring whether they survive. ICE avoids another death in its custody count while GEO Group’s role in the confinement receives less public scrutiny. José remained an ICE responsibility after the agency changed his status, but ICE turned his “release” into an exit from accountability.

ICE erased José from its count, but his family cannot erase the loss. They are left carrying the grief, unanswered questions and costs ICE abandoned.

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Carlitos Ricardo Parias has now crossed 300 days in ICE detention after federal agents shot and detained him during an October 2025 operation in Los Angeles. Parias, a journalist and livestreamer known for documenting police activity and immigration enforcement, was shot in the elbow and hospitalized before being held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.

The federal criminal case that followed was dismissed with prejudice. U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin found that federal authorities violated Parias’s constitutional rights by repeatedly preventing his criminal defense lawyers from communicating with him as he prepared for trial. The ruling prevents prosecutors from simply refiling the same charges, although the government has appealed.

But dismissal of the criminal case did not bring Carlitos home.

He remains inside Adelanto carrying the physical consequences of the shooting. His family and congressional representatives have raised concerns about inadequate treatment for his injured arm. The office of Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove reported complications after elbow surgery including loss of mobility, swelling, discoloration and persistent headaches. More recent reporting says Carlitos’s arm has turned purple and that he says the gunshot wound still has not received proper medical care.

The conditions surrounding him have added another layer of harm. In late July, Carlitos showed his family a bottle of water from Adelanto containing what appeared to be worm-like creatures. He told the Los Angeles Times that similar creatures appeared around sinks and showers and inside cooler water detainees used for drinking, cooking and coffee. Attorneys representing detainees said complaints involving water, food, sanitation and medical care continued despite a federal judge ordering ICE to make sweeping improvements at the facility.

Carlitos was documenting immigration enforcement before federal agents shot him. The criminal case built around that encounter was later dismissed after a judge found constitutional violations. More than 300 days later, he remains detained while his injured body continues carrying the consequences.

Carlitos has already carried the bullet, the prosecution and more than 300 days of confinement. ICE is still making him carry the harm.

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Roberto Mosquera has spent more than a year inside a maximum-security prison in Eswatini, thousands of miles from the wife and four daughters he left behind in the United States. He is not serving an Eswatini criminal sentence, and authorities there have not charged him with committing a crime in the country. His imprisonment followed a decision by the United States to remove him from the country where he had lived since childhood and send him instead to a nation where he had no known ties.

Mosquera came to the United States from Cuba as a child during the 1980 Mariel boatlift. His history in America includes a serious crime: as a young man, he was convicted of attempted murder and served the criminal sentence imposed for that conviction. That record does not need to be minimized to understand what happened decades later. The sentence imposed by the American criminal legal system was completed long before ICE placed Mosquera on a plane bound for Eswatini.

Because repatriation to Cuba was historically difficult for some Cuban nationals, Mosquera remained under immigration supervision after completing his criminal punishment. He continued living in the United States for decades while reporting to immigration authorities as required. During those years, he rebuilt his life, became a longtime plumber and plumbing foreman, married and raised four daughters. The man ICE detained in 2025 was not serving a criminal sentence; he was living under an immigration supervision system that had allowed him to remain with his family and continue working.

That life was severed in June 2025 when Mosquera went to a routine immigration appointment in South Florida and was detained by ICE. Within weeks, the United States moved him through its immigration detention system and prepared to remove him. The destination was not Cuba. On July 16, 2025, Mosquera and four other men were deported to Eswatini, a small southern African country where Mosquera had no known connection and, according to reporting about his case, had never even heard of the country before learning that the United States intended to send him there.

After the transfer, Eswatini authorities confined Mosquera inside Matsapha Correctional Complex, a high-security prison. More than a year later, he remains there without an Eswatini criminal charge and without an Eswatini sentence explaining why he should continue spending his days behind prison walls. The United States carried out the deportation, while Eswatini carried out the imprisonment; those are separate government actions with separate accountability questions. Mosquera’s completed American sentence did not become a new Eswatini sentence merely because ICE transported him across an ocean.

Access to legal counsel has also become part of the struggle surrounding his detention. Amnesty International documented repeated problems obtaining confidential legal access to people transferred to Eswatini under the arrangement. In April 2026, an Eswatini court ordered prison authorities to allow local attorney Sibusiso Nhlabatsi access to the detainees after authorities had blocked or restricted that contact. For Mosquera, the barriers meant that challenging his continued confinement required first overcoming obstacles simply to communicate confidentially with a lawyer.

By October 2025, Mosquera and other detainees were protesting their confinement from inside Matsapha. They began a hunger strike over their continued detention, a protest that continued for weeks. By that point, the five men in the original transfer had already spent months inside a prison despite not being convicted of crimes committed in Eswatini. Recent reporting about Mosquera’s case has also described worsening glaucoma and deterioration in his vision while he remains confined far from his family.

The Department of Homeland Security has emphasized the criminal histories of people placed into third-country deportation arrangements, but its public description of Mosquera created another accountability problem. DHS characterized him as a murderer, while court-record reporting identified his conviction as attempted murder. His actual conviction was serious without changing what the record says. More importantly, neither description answers the question created by his current imprisonment: what sentence is Mosquera serving in Eswatini when no Eswatini court has convicted or sentenced him?

Mosquera’s transfer was part of a broader U.S.–Eswatini arrangement rather than an isolated decision. Reuters reported that the agreement could involve as many as 160 third-country deportees and $5.1 million in U.S. funding. The arrangement raised legal and constitutional questions inside Eswatini, including challenges concerning the government’s authority to accept people removed from the United States and the legal basis for their continued detention after arrival.

The system continued expanding after Mosquera and the four men transported with him entered Matsapha. By July 2026, Amnesty International reported that at least 30 people had been sent to Eswatini through the third-country deportation program. That expansion exposes what can disappear behind the administrative language of “removal” and “deportation”: people can be taken from communities in the United States, transported to countries where they have no meaningful connection, confined far beyond the reach of their families and then forced to fight for access to lawyers capable of challenging what happened to them.

For Mosquera, none of those consequences are abstract. His wife and four daughters remain in the United States, along with the plumbing career and family life he built during the decades after completing his criminal sentence. ICE detained him during a routine encounter with the immigration system and sent him thousands of miles away, where Eswatini authorities have now kept him inside a maximum-security prison for more than a year.

Mosquera’s attempted-murder conviction remains part of his history, and the sentence imposed for that crime was served. What requires accountability now is how that completed American punishment was followed decades later by deportation to a third country and more than a year of imprisonment there without an Eswatini criminal charge or sentence. Roberto Mosquera is still inside Matsapha, separated from his family and confined under a sentence that does not exist.

Roberto Mosquera served his sentence decades ago. ICE still tore him away from his wife and four daughters, sent him to a country where he had no known ties, and left him inside a maximum-security prison with no Eswatini criminal charge and no sentence to serve.

Americans Against ICE documents cases like Roberto’s because third-country deportation can push people thousands of miles from their families and out of public view while the system that put them there keeps moving.

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