José Trejo López believed immigration agents had separated him from his younger brother, Jozue, so they could ask him more questions during a check-in in New York City in March.
José and Josue, then 20 and 19 years old, had been subject to immigration and customs inspections dozens of times over the past 10 years, ever since they fled El Salvador with their mother as young children. Appointments often took all day long, and sometimes I had to miss school or final exams. Jose was embarrassed to tell his teachers and classmates where he was going, but he also knew he had to fulfill his immigration obligations and maintain good behavior and arrest record.
“You have to follow the law, because when you follow the law things go well, right?” Jose said.
That day, Jose heard the clinking of handcuffs. The policeman told him not to make a fuss. Josue turned around and saw his brother being restrained and another officer handcuffing him as well.
By the time the brothers entered the ICE field office for their 8 a.m. appointment, about two months into President Donald Trump’s second administration, rumors were swirling that immigration agents were detaining people during routine immigration checks. These appointments typically target people who are not considered a threat to the public and have pending immigration cases.
The check-in detentions were part of President Trump’s efforts to carry out mass deportation, one of his 2024 campaign promises. But this strategy contradicted assurances from President Trump and his administration that immigration officials would “always pursue the worst of the worst first.”
President Trump said on August 22, 2024, “I’m talking about this, starting specifically with criminals. They are some of the worst people anywhere in the world.”
On October 31, CBS News correspondent Norah O’Donnell asked President Trump about his promise to “deport the worst of the worst violent criminals.” President Trump responded, “That’s what we’re doing.”
Neither Jose nor Josué were convicted. So did 73% of the more than 65,000 immigrants in ICE custody as of November, a record number of detainees. Almost half of immigrants in ICE custody have not been convicted of a crime and have pending criminal charges. According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, 5% of convicted immigrants have been convicted of violent crimes such as murder or rape.
Despite President Trump’s statements, some of the most high-profile moments of his administration’s mass deportation campaign did not result in large-scale arrests of violent criminals.
In March, the Department of Homeland Security sent nearly 250 Venezuelan men to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. A subsequent ProPublica investigation found that only 32 of them had been convicted in the United States, mostly for nonviolent crimes such as retail theft and traffic violations.
In the first half of Chicago’s months-long immigration crackdown dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz,” immigration officials arrested 1,900 people, two-thirds of whom had no convictions or pending charges, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis.
When PolitiFact asked the White House whether its detention strategy was consistent with public statements from President Trump and administration officials, press secretary Abigail Jackson said, “The Trump administration’s top immigration enforcement priority is the threat posed by Joe Biden’s surge to the southern border.” “It’s about arresting and removing dangerous, violent, illegal, and criminal aliens. Recent arrests by ICE have included rapists, pedophiles, murderers, and other criminal illegal aliens. But it targets anyone who is in the country illegally or enters the country as a criminal.” As a result of violating U.S. law, you will be subject to deportation unless you take advantage of the opportunity for voluntary deportation. ”
Jose and Josue had applied for legal status. They weren’t hiding and had spent years appearing before ICE agents and immigration judges.
In May, José and Josué were deported to El Salvador, where the rest of their family was already in exile.
“We were following the law, but we were punished,” Jose said.
Brothers’ quest for legal residency
Fleeing the threat of gang violence in El Salvador, José and Joz arrived in the United States with their mother, Alma López Diaz, in the summer of 2016 when they were 11 and 10 years old.
U.S. authorities stopped the family at the southern border and released them into the United States while they sought asylum. The family moved to the home of the boys’ aunt in Georgia.
The brothers enrolled in school and learned English by reading books, using language learning apps, and correcting themselves when they were teased by their classmates.
Ala Amoachi, who became the brothers’ immigration lawyer in 2024, said judges had dismissed the family’s asylum cases and appeals by 2020 because gang extortion is generally not considered a reason for asylum. Jose and Josué had been ordered deported.
Deportation orders are suspended when people appeal. Jose and Jozue had appealed their cases until 2020, but even though the appeal deadline had expired, they continued to show up for ICE check-ins. Amoachi said the government likely did not deport them at the time because they had no criminal history and humanitarian considerations “such as family unity and the fact that they have a brother with a disability who is an American citizen.”
By 2025, when the brothers were taken into custody, there was a viable path to legal status, based on a process their lawyers initiated in 2024.
We contacted DHS to ask why the brothers were detained and deported even though their immigration case was pending, but we received no response.
During his second term, President Trump has drastically curtailed legal channels for immigration. In January, he ended a Biden-era program that allowed people to make immigration reservations at the border and legally enter the U.S. to seek asylum. Under the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security stripped hundreds of thousands of people of temporary legal protections that allowed them to live and work in the United States.
Jose continued to strive to build what he called the American Dream, but his immigration status created obstacles to buying a car and getting a job.
In 2024, the brothers moved to Long Island, New York, where their mother’s long-distance boyfriend lived.
Amoachi began the process of applying for Special Immigrant Youth Status, which protects young immigrants who have been abused, abandoned or neglected by their parents. According to court documents, the brothers’ father abandoned them. Once this status is approved, the immigrant can finally apply for permanent residence. Amoachi said the brothers’ former attorney in Georgia did not tell them the position was an option.
Under the Biden administration, immigrants granted special immigrant youth status were protected from deportation. The Trump administration ended the Deportation Protection Program in June and began detaining and deporting people with special immigrant youth status. Immigrant advocacy groups are suing the government over the changes.
sudden unexpected results
Jose’s dream of a new start in New York didn’t last long.
During the March 14 meeting, an ICE officer asked if the brothers were contesting the removal order, and when Jose handed them the paperwork, the officer “said, ‘This isn’t going to work,'” Jose said.
Within minutes, the brothers were handcuffed.
There is no data on how many people are arrested while participating in required ICE check-ins, but news articles and social media clips are filled with examples of immigrants being detained and separated from their families. Lawyers are warning their clients about this tactic. In San Diego, several immigrants who were detained at check-in are suing the government.
Amoasi, who has worked as an immigration lawyer for 15 years, said that before President Trump’s second term, he had never seen cases like Jose and Jozu’s (young men with deportation orders but no convictions or gang affiliation pending) end in detention.
About a week after the brothers were taken into custody, President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said the administration was prioritizing criminals.
“We’re going to continue to target the worst of the worst, which we’ve been doing since day one, and deport them from the United States,” Homan said on March 23.
leave everything behind
The detention was the first leg of a two-month journey to bring the brothers back to El Salvador.
Hours after the brothers were taken into custody, immigration officials shackled them and took them to a detention center in Buffalo, New York.
While in custody, José worked with an incarcerated pastor to host weekly church services. Josu got a job in the kitchen washing dishes and helping with serving food, earning $1 a day. He used the money to call his mother and buy ramen, a delicacy during his detention. Josué also taught English to other detainees and served as an unofficial interpreter for immigration officials.
On March 26, a New York Family Court judge ruled that Jose and Jozue had been abandoned by their father and it was not in their best interest to return to El Salvador. However, they remained in custody.
Jose said that in early May, officers would summon the brothers for processing, and they would either be deported or released. Their fellow detainees cheered them on.
The results were not as expected. The brothers were transported to Louisiana.
For several days, José and Josué each stayed in solitary confinement cells known as hiereras (Spanish for “icebox”), which held about 100 people. On May 7, their mother’s birthday, a police officer called the brothers by name to board a plane to El Salvador. Jose said that once he got on the plane, a police officer came in with another list of names of people who could get off the plane. That was Jose’s last hope. But the names of the brothers were not called.
“When the plane took off, I knew I was leaving my mother behind,” Jose said. “Literally everything was on the back burner. Our dreams, everything.”
stuck
Nine years after fleeing their home country, Jose and Josué, now 21 and 20, landed in El Salvador. They didn’t have passports. U.S. immigration authorities accepted them when they applied for asylum and never returned them.
Authorities gave each brother a piece of paper with his name written on it for identification. When Jose and Josue arrived at the immigration processing center, they saw people waiting for deportees from the United States. No one was waiting for them.
“I looked at my brother and said, ‘Okay, what are we going to do? What are we going to do?'” Jose said.
Their mother sent a childhood friend of their grandmother’s to pick them up. For the first few nights, the brothers could not eat or sleep. They were later diagnosed with PTSD and depression, Amoachi said.
A few weeks after José and Josue arrived in El Salvador, a graduation ceremony was held at Josue’s high school in Georgia. Instead of walking across the stage, he watched on his cell phone as his name was announced and cried in Jose’s arms.
Seven months after being deported, Jose and Josu are anxious to be reunited with their families. Amoachi filed several appeals on their behalf.
Jose said the brothers complied with conditions of appearing in court, attending ICE check-ins, and having good moral conduct and no criminal history.
“So what are the legal recourses?” Jose asked. “That’s not true.”
PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
