In the Line of ICE: Lives Upended by Trump’s Mass Deportation Promise

On July 17, 2024, delegates on the floor of the Republican National Convention held signs that read, “Mass Deportation Now!” In accepting his party’s nomination for president the next night, Donald Trump promised to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”

Within days of Trump’s 2025 inauguration, immigration enforcement activities on U.S. streets ramped up as the administration began highly publicized operations in Chicago. Since then, ICE has claimed millions of immigrants have either been deported or have self-deported. However, the agency hasn’t provided documentation to back up that claim.

Regardless, countless lives have been upended in the first 18 months of the second Trump administration.

Although his opponents (and even some of his supporters) have complained that Trump promised to go after the “worst of the worst,” that was never his promise. The promise was mass deportation. 

For Stephen Miller, Trump’s political adviser and the primary architect of his immigration policy, there has never been a distinction, for deportation purposes, between violent criminals and immigrants who are productive, contributing members of society. Miller also perpetuates the falsehood that citizenship is the only legal way to reside in our country.

The result has been the detention and deportation of some violent criminals who are in the country illegally. But these cases have come alongside those of undocumented residents who have lived here for decades and legal residents who have been targeted on the streets based on the color of their skin. Some have been detained for indefinite periods, some have been deported, and others have died in custody.

ICE officers have also killed U.S. citizens during protests against these activities.

Some of these stories remain in the news for weeks on end. Others are blips on the screen of the national consciousness. Even so, people of faith must not become numb to what is happening all around us, and we must not forget the lives caught in the crosshairs of hate and xenophobia.

This fall, Good Faith Media will keep the stories of our neighbors in front of our audience. We hope their stories will move you to pray for them and to show care through your actions.

Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz and Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz

In 2025, Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz was on his way with his brother to a roofing job in Overland, Missouri, when ICE officials detained him. He was deported to his native Guatemala, which he had originally fled to escape violence.

Earlier this year, Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz, Pérez Paz’s wife, returned to Guatemala with their children. There is no publicly available information confirming that Pérez Paz had an asylum case before his deportation. González de la Cruz, however, had an active asylum case in the U.S., with a court date scheduled for 2027.

In July, Guatemalan police found Pérez Paz and González de la Cruz dead in a field about a hundred miles outside Guatemala City. Their hands had been tied behind their backs. Police reported apparent gunshot wounds to his neck and her head. Their infant daughter was found alive at the scene.

According to St. Louis Public Radio, the couple was buried in the Guatemalan countryside with their children looking on.

Jessica Treviño

Jessica Treviño was brought to the United States when she was 7 years old. At 20, she became part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), an Obama-era initiative that allowed her to stay in the country.

Late last year, Treviño and her husband were arrested by federal agents in a South Texas Home Depot parking lot. Despite Treviño’s DACA status, she was deported to Mexico with her husband in March of this year.

DACA recipients must meet criminal-history requirements and generally need advance permission to travel outside the U.S. This summer, Treviño received a notice that her DACA status would be terminated because of unauthorized travel on March 25—the day she was deported.

Treviño’s three children, who are U.S. citizens, remain in Texas without her.

Mahmoud Khalil

In March 2025, federal agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful U.S. permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who had participated in campus activism. Khalil was the first person arrested in the Trump administration’s campaign against pro-Palestinian students involved in campus demonstrations following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.

Khalil was arrested despite not being accused of breaking any laws during the protests in which he participated. According to the Associated Press, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited a rarely used statute concerning people whose presence could pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” as justification for seeking Khalil’s deportation.

He remained in a Louisiana detention facility, far from his family, for 104 days before a judge ordered his release. Early in his detention, he said prison officials withheld essential medication.

Khalil was born in 1995 to Palestinian parents living in a refugee camp in Syria. An immigration judge ordered him deported to either Algeria, where he holds citizenship through his mother, or Syria. He remains in the U.S. as a green-card holder while he fights the deportation order in court.