Stories
Andry
“We were stuck in hell, and we were told we would never leave that place.”
Andry Hernández Romero recalled of the four months he was held incommunicado in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison while being tortured, beaten and subjected to sexual abuse.
Andry is a gay man who fled persecution in Venezuela to seek asylum in the United States. While his asylum claim was pending before a U.S. immigration court, the Trump administration disappeared Hernández Romero and others to CECOT. He and other Venezuelans the Trump administration claimed were gang members, in many cases without any evidence of criminal records or gang membership, were eventually forcibly returned to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap, without consideration of the harms they fled there.
F.A.
F.A. and her husband were targeted by the Turkish government for their membership in the Gülen, also known as Hizmet, movement, a religious and political movement in Turkey.
After a warrant was issued for his arrest, F.A.’s husband fled Turkey to seek asylum in the United States. F.A. followed with their two minor children after the disappearance of one of the children’s teachers and reports of the torture of Gülen movement members. F.A. and her children entered the United States in early February 2025 and repeatedly told immigration officials that they had come to seek asylum and that F.A. ʼs husband was in the United States seeking asylum for the same reasons. After nine days in detention, F.A. and her children were expelled on a military plane to Panama, where they were detained in a hotel without the ability to communicate with anyone outside.
As she said in her declaration filed with a U.S. federal court:
“While we were at the hotel…some government officials came to tell us that if we wanted to stay in Panama, we would have to go to a detention camp in the jungle… By the way they talked about it, I was fearful that we would not survive if we got sent there. For that reason, I felt pressured to accept a return to Turkey for myself and my kids. We are now in hiding in Turkey, and I am unable to find a job because of my affiliation with the Gülen…I live in fear every day. I pray that we can reunite with my husband soon.”
D.A.
D.A., a political activist who was violently attacked in Nigeria and is married to a U.S. citizen, and K.S. a bisexual man from Gambia (where same-sex relationships are criminalized) were both granted protection from removal based on probable persecution and torture in their home countries.
ICE nonetheless deported them without paperwork to Ghana on a military cargo plane in the middle of the night alongside a dozen other West African men and women. Upon arrival, Ghana immediately deported K.S. to Gambia in a clear act of chain refoulement. D.A. was detained in a camp under terrible conditions for more than two weeks and with limited access to a phone to call his wife– until Ghanaian authorities deported him to Togo.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia
The attempt to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a third country underscores that the Trump administration is using the threat of forced transfer as a means of coercion or punishment against immigrants who are trying to exercise their rights or who have been granted protection against removal to their home countries.
The Trump administration mistakenly sent Abrego Garcia to CECOT in violation of an immigration court withholding of removal order finding that he would likely be persecuted if returned to El Salvador. In El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was subject to “severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.
Since being required by a federal court order to return Abrego García to the United States, the Trump administration has been relentless in trying to punish him through criminal prosecution, belatedly charging him for smuggling that allegedly occurred in 2022. DHS also told Abrego Garcia that if he pled guilty to a criminal charge, he would be deported to Costa Rica; otherwise, DHS would deport him to Uganda. But when Abrego Garcia arranged to depart for Costa Rica, DHS continued to insist on his removal elsewhere and asked officials from Eswatini, Ghana, Uganda, and Liberia to accept Abrego Garcia.
In the words of Abrego Garcia’s attorney to a federal judge in Maryland:
“effectively, they [Trump administration officials] are holding hostage passage to Costa Rica to … induce him to plead guilty…They have spun the globe and picked various places that they can identify, whether it's to control him for political gain …selecting places…he has no relationship to.”
Y.A.
Y.A. fled Somalia after her stepmother subjected her to female genital mutilation and forced marriage to a much older man. Before the marriage could take place, members of her fiancé’s clan kidnapped her, and her fiancé attempted to rape her. Y.A. fled first to Kenya and South Africa but was unable to find safety in either country, prompting her to seek refuge in the United States.
After entering the United States in October 2024, Y.A. was detained by DHS and applied for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture. On September 4, 2025, the immigration judge pretermitted her applications and ordered her removed to Honduras or, alternatively, Uganda under Asylum Cooperative Agreements. Y.A. remains detained, with her administrative appeal pending. She fears severe harm if removed to Honduras as a Black, Muslim woman who does not speak Spanish, and if removed to Uganda, she fears being located by the family she fled, forced to marry her attempted rapist, or subjected to further gender-based violence. After the pretermission order, Uganda announced it would no longer consider asylum claims from Somali nationals.
L.H.
L.H., an Indigenous Quechua woman, fled Peru in 2021 with her minor son, Y.V., after years of severe gender- and race-based domestic violence by her ex-partner, including kidnapping, stalking, and a knife assault. The police repeatedly failed to protect her, despite numerous reports. After arriving in the United States in May 2021, L.H. and Y.V. settled in California and timely applied for asylum. At a November 2025 immigration court hearing, DHS moved to pretermit her applications and seek their removal to Honduras under an Asylum Cooperative Agreement. L.H. fears deportation to Honduras, where she faces a serious risk of gender- and race-based violence and heightened danger as a single mother without male protection.
Despite having protection under the Convention Against Torture that barred his removal to El Salvador, C.O. was detained by ICE in May 2025 and transferred among multiple U.S. detention facilities, during which officers pressured him to accept removal to Mexico—which he refused.In early October 2025, ICE transported him to the U.S.–Mexico border and transferred him to Mexican authorities. Mexican officials subsequently drove him to the Guatemalan border and handed him over to Guatemalan authorities, who then transported him to the border with El Salvador. This series of transfers concluded in chain refoulement, with C.O. remaining shackled during transit. Upon arrival in El Salvador, Salvadoran authorities detained him and told him they were going to send him to CECOT, the notorious maximum-security prison. According to a sworn declaration from his wife, C.O. called her, terrified and crying. He said he told the officers he had been granted protection from the United States and he didn’t understand why he ended up in El Salvador. He said the officers told him that he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison. Since October 9, 2025, his family has had no contact with him and fears for his safety.
K.V.V. and P.R.
K.V.V. is a 49-year-old Vietnamese national who came to the United States as a refugee at age eight in 1984. He was ordered removed in 2007 following a criminal conviction, completed his sentence, and remained on supervised release for 18 years before ICE arrested him in March 2025. On October 6, 2025, he was removed to Eswatini as part of a group transfer. Since his detention in Eswatini, K.V.V.’s physical and mental health have deteriorated significantly; his family in the United States reports weight loss, emotional distress, and fear that he will remain indefinitely exiled in Eswatini.
P.R. is a 42-year-old Cambodian national born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his family fled the Cambodian genocide. He entered the United States in 1985 at age three and lived there for 40 years. In 2010, he was ordered removed to Thailand, a country of which he is neither a citizen nor national. After completing his criminal sentence in January 2025, he remained in ICE custody for nine additional months before being deported to Eswatini on October 6, 2025. P.R.’s sister says that he is extremely frustrated by his arbitrary imprisonment in Eswatini.
These men, and others detained in Eswatini, report that it’s very hot and humid, and the prison does not have air conditioning. They are feeling miserable because of their situation, and the heat and humidity make the conditions of their indefinite imprisonment even more unbearable. The Trump administration made no efforts to try to deport K.V.V. and P.R. to their home countries before banishing them like men without countries to Eswatini.