On an unseasonably warm morning in April, a small group of men stood waiting for work outside a Home Depot off Route 40 in Catonsville. A woman named Juana, accompanied by her 3-year-old daughter, prepared tamales and traditional Guatemalan food for the men as she often did.

Juana noticed a white vehicle and sent a photo of it to a new friend, Kathy Ohanlon, a member of a small group of local volunteers who keep watch for federal immigration agents.

Ohanlon compared the vehicle to one she had seen at an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement stop off Route 40 the day before. The license plates matched. It was ICE.

Ohanlon quietly notified the men outside the Home Depot, who left quickly. Juana took her time. She was on a legal path to obtaining a green card in the United States, which she entered about 10 years ago as an unaccompanied minor. Now 24, she also had her young daughter who was born here: an American citizen.

Neither was enough to protect Juana from the Trump administration’s radical mass deportation campaign. Her ordeal over the next month shows the lengths ICE is willing to go to deport even people who are permitted to live and work in the U.S.

After federal agents fatally shot two American citizens during a violent crackdown in Minneapolis earlier this year, ICE’s new leadership pledged a quieter approach to immigration enforcement. Juana’s story shows how that approach is playing out in Maryland.

As Juana gathered her things and left the Home Depot parking lot on April 16, the white ICE vehicle zoomed up behind her and followed. Ohanlon watched as the vehicle pulled up alongside Juana’s car and appeared to force her to the side of the road, where Juana struck another vehicle before coming to a stop. No one was injured. ICE later claimed its officers encountered Juana while looking for another woman in a matching vehicle.

“I was trying to run. But they caught me on the highway,” said Juana, speaking through an interpreter.

The Brew agreed not to use Juana or her husband’s last names for this story to protect their identities, but has verified their accounts when possible using public records, contemporaneous notes and interviews with witnesses.

Juana texted Ohanlon: “Ayuda” (Help).

The arrest took a little while. Maryland State Police showed up to deal with the car crash and spoke with the ICE agents. Juana’s husband, Abel, showed up at the scene and watched from a distance with Ohanlon.

When the troopers asked the pair to take the little girl to the bathroom, they said they would – as long as Juana would still be there when they got back. The troopers assured them that she would not be taken away while they were gone, according to Ohanlon.

By the time Abel and Ohanlon returned, Juana was gone, arrested by ICE and whisked away to the hold rooms at the George H. Fallon Federal Building in downtown Baltimore.

“It was as cold as a refrigerator,” Juana said. She slept on the floor under a mylar blanket.

By the time Abel and Ohanlon returned, Juana was gone, arrested by ICE and whisked away to the hold rooms at the George H. Fallon Federal Building.

The hold rooms have become notorious over the past year, plagued by overcrowding and unhygienic conditions as ICE packed in detainees.

Under Maryland law, ICE cannot contract with local jails to house immigration detainees. So the agency holds people in the cells in downtown Baltimore until they can be sent to larger detention centers in other states.

Detainees at the Baltimore hold room have described harsh conditions there, including limited shower facilities, a single toilet with little privacy and no beds to sleep in. Some said they received little food during lengthy stays, and a pending federal lawsuit revealed the facility sometimes housed more than double its intended capacity.

ICE briefly shut down the hold rooms after a federal judge ordered them to limit the number of detainees being held there – emptying the cells a day before a planned Congressional oversight visit – but began using the facility to hold people again soon after.

Taken to Louisiana

Two days after Juana’s arrest, a Saturday, ICE transferred her to Richwood Correctional Center in Louisiana.

Her lawyers, who took on the case pro bono, had already filed a motion to free her in Maryland’s federal court. ICE proceeded anyway, flying Juana southward with chains around her wrists, waist and ankles, she said.

Conditions in Louisiana were worse, and Juana deteriorated.

Her lawyers said they were increasingly worried about her mental health in detention. She could not hold down food. Other detainees stole her clothes because they had only been provided with two uniforms themselves, Juana said. Their clothes never dried properly in the humidity, and the facility stank of mold, she recalled.

“I wanted to die,” Juana said. “It was horrible.”

Detainees who felt sick were told they could wait for a doctor but never saw one, she said. ICE agents at the facility ignored the people in their custody unless fighting broke out, she said, and didn’t care if detainees ate their food, which consisted of sandwiches, cookies or, sometimes, a vegetable like carrots.

While Juana sat in detention, her family worried about what would come next.

Abel was already on an ICE ankle monitor, and there would be no one left to care for their daughter if he got detained, too. The couple decided to send their daughter to Guatemala, where Abel’s family would care for her until things were safe.

For the first three days, the 3-year-old was frightened, surrounded by new relatives she’d never met. Then she went to stay with another of Juana’s in-laws who keeps chickens and pet dogs. The animals helped keep their little girl calm, Juana and Abel said.

Decision to Self-Deport

Meanwhile, a legal battle over Juana’s freedom was playing out in Maryland.

Because she came to the U.S. as a teenager, Juana received Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a classification that gives undocumented children facing certain conditions a chance to apply for a green card. Because it can take years for visas to become available, young people with SIJ status could receive “deferred action” beginning in 2022, meaning that ICE would not treat their removal from the country as a priority and would allow them to work.

ICE rescinded the deferred action policy earlier this month. And in Juana’s case, the agency argued that it had discretion to revoke her deferred action at any time, including after she had already been detained by ICE agents.

“This letter serves as notification that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has individually reviewed your case and exercised discretion to terminate your period of deferred action,” reads a notice in Juana’s court file dated April 20, 2026, four days after her arrest.

“We are good people, but I feel horrible [about] the way they treated us”  – Juana’s husband.

Juana’s lawyers prepared to argue that her detention violated her due process rights. She was at least entitled to a bond hearing to determine whether she should stay in detention while her case played out in immigration court, separate from federal court in which Juana had different lawyers.

But Juana decided she’d had enough. At a hearing before an immigration judge, she asked to return to Guatemala and be reunited with her daughter. She offered, in other words, to self-deport.

“When I was in prison in the states, I said I would never come back here,” Juana said.

A Judge’s Harsh Ruling

Her offer was not enough for the immigration officials at the hearing.

According to Juana, they told the judge that she had endangered her daughter when she got into the crash outside the Home Depot in Catonsville. The judge ordered Juana removed from the country, a punitive outcome that hurts her chances of immigrating legally in the future.

Juana’s lawyers found themselves in the odd position of advocating for her swift removal from the country. While ICE can sometimes take weeks to deport people with removal orders, Juana’s lawyers wanted to ensure she would be out of that detention center in Louisiana as soon as possible.

Within a few days, Juana was in Guatemala and reunited with her daughter. Abel also joined them there.

On a video call from Guatemala, Juana held her daughter in her lap as they rode on a bus together through a bustling town. You can see in her daughter’s eyes that she is feeling more at ease with the family back together, Juana said.

“We are good people,” Abel said, “but I feel horrible [about] the way they treated us.”

Juana and Abel do not have criminal records. But now their daughter, an American citizen, asks about the police who took her mother away. The ICE agents still appear in her dreams.

• Madeleine O’Neill is a freelance reporter in Baltimore.