\n<\/p>\n
Jose Trejo Lopez thought the immigration agent had separated him from his brother Josue so the officer could ask more questions during a March check-in in New York City.<\/p>\n
Jose and Josue, 20 and 19 years old at the time, had been to dozens of Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-ins in the nearly 10 years since they fled El Salvador as children with their mother. The appointments often took all day and sometimes required missing school and final exams. Jose felt embarrassed to tell his teachers and classmates where he was going, but also knew he had to fulfil his immigration obligations and maintain good conduct and his arrest-free record.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to follow the law, because when you follow the law things go well, right?\u201d Jose said.<\/p>\n
That day, Jose heard the rattle of handcuffs. The officer told him not to make a scene. As Josue turned and saw his older brother restrained, a different officer handcuffed him, too.<\/p>\n
By the time the brothers had walked into ICE\u2019s field office for their 8am appointment, about two months into President Donald Trump\u2019s second administration, rumours were swirling that immigration agents were detaining people at routine immigration check-ins. These appointments are typically for people with pending immigration cases who aren\u2019t considered threats to the public.<\/p>\n
Detaining people at check-ins became part of Trump\u2019s effort to carry out mass deportations, one of his\u00a02024 campaign promises<\/a>. But the strategy contradicted Trump\u2019s and his administration\u2019s\u00a0assurances that immigration agents would pursue \u201cthe worst of the worst always first\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m talking about, in particular, starting with the criminals. These are some of the worst people anywhere in the world,\u201d Trump\u00a0said on August 22, 2024.<\/p>\n On October 31, CBS News correspondent Norah O\u2019Donnell asked Trump about his promise \u201cto deport the worst of the worst, violent criminals\u201d. Trump answered:\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither Jose nor Josue have been convicted of a crime. The same is true of 73 percent of the more than 65,000 immigrants<\/a>\u00a0in ICE detention as of November, a\u00a0record number of detainees. Nearly half of all immigrants in ICE detention have neither a criminal conviction nor pending criminal charges. Of the immigrants with criminal convictions, 5 percent have been convicted of violent crime such as murder or rape, according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.<\/p>\n Despite what Trump said, some of the most high-profile moments during his administration\u2019s mass deportation campaign did not lead to large-scale arrests of violent criminals.<\/p>\n In March, the Department of Homeland Security sent nearly 250 Venezuelan men to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. A ProPublica\u00a0investigation later found that only 32 of the men had US criminal convictions, most for nonviolent offences such as retail theft or traffic violations.<\/p>\n In the first half of a months-long Chicago immigration crackdown dubbed \u201cOperation Midway Blitz\u201c, immigration officers arrested 1,900 people, two-thirds of whom had no criminal convictions or pending charges, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis.<\/p>\n When PolitiFact asked the White House whether its detention strategy was in line with what Trump and officials have said publicly, spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: \u201cThe Trump Administration\u2019s top immigration enforcement priority is arresting and removing the dangerous violent, illegal criminal aliens that Joe Biden let flood across our Southern Border \u2013 of which there are many. Recent ICE arrests<\/a> include criminal illegal aliens who are rapists, pedophiles and murderers. But anyone who is illegally present in the country, and as a result breaking US laws, is eligible for deportation if they do not take advantage of self-deportation opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n Jose and Josue were applying for legal status. They were not in hiding and had spent years appearing before ICE officers and immigration judges.<\/p>\n In May, Jose and Josue were deported to El Salvador, a country the rest of their family had already fled.<\/p>\n \u201cWe followed the law and we were punished,\u201d Jose said.<\/p>\n Fleeing\u00a0threats of gang violence in El Salvador, Jose and Josue arrived in the US in summer 2016 at the ages of 11 and 10 with their mother, Alma Lopez Diaz.<\/p>\n US officials stopped the family at the southern border and released them into the US while they sought asylum. The family moved in with the boys\u2019 aunt in Georgia.<\/p>\n The brothers enrolled in school and learned English by reading books, using language-learning apps and correcting themselves after classmates teased them.<\/p>\n By 2020, judges had denied the family\u2019s asylum case and appeals because gang extortion is not generally considered a reason for asylum, said Ala Amoachi, who became the brothers\u2019 immigration lawyer in 2024. Jose and Josue had received a deportation order.<\/p>\n Deportation orders are paused when people file appeals. Jose and Josue were appealing until 2020, when their appeals ran out, but they continued to appear at ICE check-ins. Amoachi said the government likely didn\u2019t deport them during that time because they had no criminal records and for humanitarian considerations \u201csuch as family unity and the fact that they have a younger brother who\u2019s a US citizen and who\u2019s disabled\u201d.<\/p>\n By 2025, when the brothers were detained, they had a viable pathway to obtaining legal status, based on a process their attorney started in 2024.<\/p>\n We contacted DHS to ask why the brothers were detained and deported while they had a pending immigration case and received no reply.<\/p>\n During his second term, Trump has significantly curtailed legal pathways for immigrants. In January, he\u00a0ended a Biden-era programme that let people schedule immigration appointments at the border and legally enter the US to seek asylum. Under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has stripped\u00a0hundreds of thousands of people of\u00a0temporary legal protections that let them live and work in the US.<\/p>\n Jose continued to try to build what he called his American dream, but his immigration status presented obstacles to buying a car and getting a job.<\/p>\n In 2024, the brothers moved to Long Island, New York, where their mother\u2019s long-distance partner lived.<\/p>\n Amoachi initiated a process for them to apply for\u00a0Special Immigrant Juveniles Status, a protection for young immigrants who were abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent. The brothers\u2019 father had abandoned them, court documents say. When approved, the status\u00a0allows\u00a0immigrants to eventually apply for permanent residency. The brothers\u2019 previous lawyer in Georgia had failed to tell them this status was an option, Amoachi said.<\/p>\nThe brothers\u2019 quest for legal residency<\/h2>\n