By Ben Warren, bwarren@detroitnews.com
Less than 24 hours after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took 17-year-old Detroit high school student Santiago Perez and his mother, Evelin Perez, into custody, a federal judge ordered the agency not to remove them from Michigan.
It was too late. Evelin and Santiago were on a flight out of the Detroit airport less than an hour before the judge filed his order, on their way to an ICE detention center in Texas, said George B. Washington, who is representing them in a federal court case in Michigan.
“I knew from past experience that what ICE does is arrest people and put them on the first train or plane out of the jurisdiction,” Washington said.
Two of Santiago’s classmates at Western International High School, Kerly and Antony Sosa, are also being held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, according to a letter Michigan lawmakers sent to ICE officials on Dec. 9 urging their release.
Their families must now decide whether to fight their cases in court — which could take years — or return to Venezuela, a country they once fled.
The Detroit teens are among nearly 1,000 people ICE has taken from Michigan to detention centers in Texas and Louisiana last year. Most of them have been deported.
“Detention is supposed to be something that facilitates the immigration process, not something that is punitive,” said David Thronson, a professor at Michigan State University’s College of Law.
Thronson, who researches the impact of immigration law on children, said the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump has adopted a policy of rapid transfers to discourage legal challenges.
“That’s something the (Trump) administration has pursued,” he said, “to scare people into not seeking the relief to which they’re entitled.”
New data shows that ICE moved thousands of people through detention centers in Michigan last year, often transferring them to facilities in Texas or Louisiana if they were headed for removal. Those with criminal records and pending criminal charges were more likely to be deported, the data showed.
Immigration experts and attorneys said quick transfers across state lines disadvantage detainees because they disrupt access to legal representation, while ICE officials have said the agency moves individuals to different facilities solely based on its operational needs.
ICE officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment. In a July 2025 statement about asylum seekers, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The News, “If (detainees) have a valid credible fear claim, they will continue in immigration proceedings, but if no valid claim is found, aliens will be subject to a swift deportation.”
When asked about how the agency uses its detention facilities in December, an ICE spokesperson said: “As part of ICE’s mission to remove criminal illegal aliens and immigration violators, ICE uses detention space across the nation to meet its operational needs.”
Mapping ICE detention across the U.S.
Records published in December by the Deportation Data Project, a database maintained by a team of lawyers and academics, made it possible to follow the paths of detainees as ICE moved them through the agency’s sprawling network of detention centers.
The group publishes anonymized data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests to government agencies, including ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
From Jan. 1 through Oct. 15, 2025, the data showed that about 263,000 people were detained by ICE for at least one night and that 4,666 of them spent time in a Michigan detention center or ICE holding room.
The News tracked those individuals to deportation hubs in Texas and Louisiana, and even the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.
By mid-October, 58% of the immigrants who spent time at a Michigan detention center last year were deported, most to Mexico, Venezuela and other Latin American countries.
Another 39% of people remained in detention, with ICE or another federal government agency. Just 3% were bonded out, paroled or released through another program.
The data showed that immigrants in ICE custody who were transferred more than once were deported at twice the rate of those who were never transferred to a new facility.
“For people who don’t have a lawyer, or who get whisked around to a far-away facility, somewhere halfway across the country, it’s easy to give up,” said Thronson, the MSU immigration expert.
Most were first detained in Michigan
Mor Ba, 19, another Detroit teen who attended Western International High School, is being held by ICE at North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Mich., according to the letter written by Michigan elected officials.
Though the privately run North Lake facility only reopened in June, nearly half of all immigrants who were in ICE custody in Michigan last year passed through its doors.
Federal government statistics show that the average daily population at North Lake since the beginning of October is 1,371. Its total capacity is around 1,800 people.
Stephanie Blumenau, a Detroit immigration lawyer, is representing Ba, who is from Senegal. She said he graduated from high school last year and has no criminal record.
Ba has been seeking asylum in the U.S. since he arrived, said Blumenau, and has not missed a court appearance.
ICE agents in an unmarked vehicle pulled Ba over while driving in late November and told him they were looking for another individual. He produced identification showing that he was not the person they were looking for, but the agents detained him, according to Blumenau.
Ba has been held at North Lake, more than three hours from Detroit, since his arrest.
In previous years, according to Blumenau, ICE rarely detained someone who had a scheduled court hearing unless the individual got in trouble with the police or missed a hearing. Neither situation applies to Ba.
“They’re just taking people to fill North Lake (Processing Center) with,” she said.
Blumenau hasn’t been to visit the facility in person, but speaks with Ba through video calls and over the phone.
“I’ve heard it’s not a great situation there. … It’s unclean, crowded, not great conditions, and he’s scared,” she said.
In response to a question about detainee conditions in August, an ICE spokesperson told The News: “All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members. … ICE remains committed to ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of all individuals in its custody.”
North Lake is run by GEO Group, one of the nation’s two largest private prison companies, which signed a two-year contract with ICE in March worth more than $85 million a year to run the facility.
“In all instances, our support services are monitored by ICE … to ensure compliance with ICE’s detention standards and contract requirements regarding the treatment and services ICE detainees receive,” Christopher V. Ferreira, GEO’s director of corporate relations, said in a statement to The News.
Since Oct. 1, there have been an average of 136 individuals with criminal records detained at North Lake — about 10% of the facility’s total population, according to ICE detention statistics.
U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Caledonia, whose district includes the North Lake facility, said ICE’s use of the detention center makes his community safer.
“ICE and those at the North Lake Processing Center are hard at work to make sure illegal aliens with criminal records do not pose a threat to families in Michigan and around the country,” Moolenaar said in a statement.
Texas, Louisiana were common destinations
Though a third of the immigrants held in Michigan detention centers since the beginning of last year never left the state, more than a thousand people headed south to massive ICE facilities in Louisiana and Texas.
The most common destinations were the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La., and the Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Los Fresnos, Texas.
“If you’re gonna have effective enforcement, you’re gonna have to use detention extensively, and that’s part of what we’re seeing from the administration,” said Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington D.C.-based think tank that advocates for less immigration.
“They wouldn’t be able to hold enough people in Michigan,” Camarota said. “There’s just not enough space, locally, so that’s why they’re using facilities all over the place.”
The data showed that more than 90% of ICE detainees transferred from detention centers in Michigan to Texas or Louisiana were eventually deported. That’s more than double the rate of those who stayed in Michigan.
“It may be that they’ve already conceded their case before they’re moved,” Thronson said. In that case, ICE likely moved detainees closer to the southern border for a deportation flight.
But others, Thronson said, “might be people who are contesting their case in a place where it’s harder and harder to assert those rights.”
“If you want to maximize someone’s opportunity to have a hearing on the merits in court, you don’t move them around. You let them find counsel close to where they’re picked up, where they live,” he said.
Regardless of where individuals were transferred, the data showed that leaving the facility where they were initially held increased their likelihood of being deported.
Fewer than one-third of the people in the data set who stayed at the same facility for the duration of their stay were removed from the country.
That rose to 60% for people transferred once and 86% for people transferred twice.
Immigrants in ICE custody face two major challenges when they are transferred far from home, said Russell Abrutyn, a Southfield-based immigration attorney who has represented people from other states detained in Michigan.
“The first challenge is that their family and friends, their community, don’t know where they are. It can sometimes take a few days before a person is able to reach out and make contact with someone, just to say they’re OK, they’re alive,” Abrutyn said.
He added: “If they are already in some kind of immigration process, then the transfer makes it difficult for their attorney to continue to represent them and help them pursue legal status in the United States.”
The government also has the advantage of “forum shopping,” said Thronson, the MSU law professor.
He said the federal government “would rather have many of their immigration cases in Texas or Louisiana,” where judges are less likely to heed appeals by detained immigrants.
According to Blumenau, the practice is especially common when detainees have a strong case to appeal their detention. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals — which encompasses Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — is “less immigrant-friendly” than the Sixth Circuit, which contains Michigan, according to Blumenau.
Convicted criminals more likely to be deported
While most of the people who were held by ICE in Michigan had no criminal record or pending criminal charges, those who had been convicted of or charged with a crime were more likely to be deported.
About two-thirds of the 1,903 detainees with a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges were deported, compared with just over half of the 2,763 people with no criminal record.
“The people who end up in immigration detention are obviously disproportionately criminal aliens, relative to the criminal alien share of all illegal immigrants,” said Camarota, the Center for Immigration Studies researcher.
When accounting for the number of transfers, detainees with pending criminal charges who were transferred three times were the most likely to be deported.
Within each category, individuals who were never transferred were deported at the lowest clip — 44% for convicted criminals, 39% for those with pending charges and 23% for detainees who had committed civil immigration violations.
Among detainees with criminal records, the most common conviction was driving under the influence of liquor, followed by traffic offenses and re-entering the country illegally.
About 5% of the 995 convicted criminals had been convicted of felonies. Twelve of the convictions were drug-related, and six people were convicted of homicide.
Despite the higher rates of deportation for ICE detainees with criminal records or pending charges, most of the people who were deported had only committed a civil immigration infraction.
Camarota told The News that while the federal government has emphasized deportations of immigrants with criminal records, he believes it’s important to enforce immigration laws regardless of criminal activity in the U.S.
“We enforce immigration laws because the rule of law is the basis of any democratic republic,” he said.
Taking ICE to court
A week after 11 Michigan elected officials urged ICE field office directors in Detroit and San Antonio to release the Detroit students and their parents, they heard back from Esteban A. Garcia, the assistant director of ICE’s field office in San Antonio.
“Your request for release is denied,” Garcia wrote in an email shared with The News by one of the lawmakers. He said the letter did not provide evidence that the families “would not become a public charge, nor not pose a flight risk.”
Washington, the attorney representing Santiago and Evelin Perez, said the ICE official’s response was “ridiculous.”
“Those folks were living here, working here, going to school here. And the only infraction they had was a potentially bad taillight. Throwing them in jail has nothing to do with protecting health and security or preventing them from becoming a public charge,” he said.
Instead of being detained in Texas, Washington said, “they could be working, going to school and being productive members of the Detroit community as they were before they were grabbed off the street and shoved on a plane.”
Attorneys for each of the students in Texas and Mor Ba, the recent graduate being held in Michigan, have filed separate requests for a bond hearing in federal district court, a legal strategy that has won bond hearings for hundreds of immigrants in ICE custody across the country.
Washington said he is optimistic that his petition would succeed, giving his clients a bond hearing or securing their release.
“These are people who were paroled into the US, they were scrutinized and approved…and who have been model citizens since they’ve been here,” he said.
Evelin and Santiago Perez “faced quite remarkable persecution” before arriving in the US, Washington added, a factor that would likely help their case.
On Jan. 6, Washington filed the final paperwork requesting their release.
The decision now lies with federal judge Robert J. White in the Eastern District of Michigan.
How we analyzed the data
The News analyzed records of detention stays that included some time in Michigan from a data set published by the Deportation Data Project, a group of lawyers and academics that has sued ICE for detention statistics under the Freedom of Information Act.
The most recent data release, published by the group on Dec. 1, includes information on ICE arrests, detainer requests and detentions between Sep. 1, 2023 and Oct. 15, 2025. The News analyzed records since the beginning of last year.
The original ICE detentions data set contains information on individual “stints,” continuous periods of time spent in a single facility.
Graeme Blair, a UCLA law professor and co-director of the project, wrote in an email that aside from small errors that may have occurred during ICE’s data entry process, the records fully reflect the agency’s internal administrative data on its enforcement actions.
Deportation Data Project staff compiled those records into a data set tracking “stays,” which may be made up of multiple stints. Each stay continues until an individual is no longer in ICE custody.
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