Indiana, ICE and the Destruction of Immigrant Families

“Since they grabbed my husband, I don’t know if I should be packing my stuff, trying to sell my house, or should I just keep on waiting?” Joanna says. It’s a Thursday night in mid-May. We’re sitting in her home on the west side of Indianapolis. Her forty-year-old husband, Manuel, has been detained by ICE at a county jail in Indiana for the past two months. Joanna’s two boys miss their father. But being boys, they find their distractions and play around while we talk.

She tells me most people outside the immigrant community in Indiana don’t see what’s happening. “But we see it everywhere,” she says. “It’s all the time. It’s every day. It’s everywhere. Eastside, Westside, Hamilton County. We just know.”

Joanna has struggled to keep her family afloat. On the brink of losing their business, their car and their home, the financial and emotional strain has been enormous.Greg Constantine

“Everything’s going downhill and we’re at risk of losing the business, losing our house, losing our cars. And not only us, but everybody that works for us is at risk of losing [theirs] too.”Greg Constantine

Joanna talks about people she knows whose lives have been torn apart by ICE.

She shares stories of relatives and other families she knows in Indianapolis who have been ripped apart by ICE. Of US-born children now living with relatives. Of women who have sold everything, moving from couch to couch, afraid to go to homeless shelters for fear of exposing their status. She’s lost count. “It’s hundreds. It is not ten. It’s hundreds,” she says. “Sometimes I just don’t want to answer the phone because I need to deal with my own mental space.”

Joanna and her two young sons are US-born citizens. She comes from a multi-generational Latino American family. Manuel was born in Honduras. Indiana has been his home for over fifteen years. He owns a successful roofing business that employs several people. He’s a mentor and leader to them and others in the community. Joanna earned a degree in psychology from the University of Washington. They started a family. They work hard, pay taxes, own their home, have two cars. Their children attend the local elementary school. They volunteer and are active members of their church and their community. Manuel was in the final stages of obtaining permanent residency when ICE “took” him. Their family is one of tens of thousands of mixed-status households in Indiana.

“The new administration thinks, We’re going to just deport everybody and get everybody out of here,” Joanna says. “But there’s not an understanding of how our communities have been here for so many generations, that we are the American community already.”

An oversized cardboard shipping box sits in the corner. It’s overflowing with clothes and other essentials. Over the years, Joanna and Manuel have sent many boxes like this to Honduras to help struggling and less fortunate families. Recently, they’ve sent boxes to help families who have been deported. But this box is very different.

“That box right there,” she says, “That’s filled with our stuff. It’s the first box I’ve filled that has our belongings in it. It’s my emergency box. My family’s box. Because I don’t know if we need to leave or not.”

In less than eighteen months, Indiana has emerged as one of the Trump administration’s most faithful and obliging accomplices in the assault, detention and deportation of immigrants in the country.

One week after Trump’s inauguration, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun issued an executive order to “fully cooperate with these Federal immigration policies to the extent permitted by law.” Earlier this year, Republican state lawmakers pushed through the so-called FAIRNESS Act, which requires all local law enforcement and jails to honor ICE detainers; prohibits ‘sanctuary’ policies; mandates colleges, universities and government bodies to cooperate with ICE, and empowers Indiana’s Attorney General to sue and financially punish those who do not comply. One of the most hardline such laws in the country, it was celebrated by conservatives, including the America First Policy Institute, which said the law “places Indiana at the forefront of state immigration enforcement.”

At this intersection in Noblesville, Indiana, local police pulled over a 33-year-old woman on May 13, 2026. She was charged with driving without a license and held at the Hamilton County Jail. Five days later, she was transferred into ICE custody and moved to an ICE detention center in Kentucky. The Hamilton County Sheriff was one of the first in Indiana to sign a 287(g) agreement to deputize officers to act as federal immigration agents.Greg Constantine

In September 2025, the Indiana Department of Corrections signed a 2-year agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to detain up to 1,000 immigrants per day in an unused section of the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, Indiana.Greg Constantine

Andranik

Andranik, a 39-year-old Armenian immigrant born in Uzbekistan, has lived in the US since he was thirteen. He had already spent two years in ICE detention before being transferred to Indiana on December 30, 2025. He spent five months detained by ICE at Miami Correctional Facility. While in the prison he suffered a head injury during a life-threatening seizure. Andranik said he was then pepper sprayed by guards while locked in his cell, handcuffed and moved to another building for no reason.

“Miami Correctional Facility, it was huge. They just let you do whatever you want to do over there. They didn’t care about nothing. You can basically kill each other.”

Andranik talks about life inside the Miami Correctional Facility.

You’re not hurting the adults…

but the damaging you’re doing to the kids is something you cannot take back.

From her home in rural central Indiana, a 35-year-old woman holds her mobile phone and meets with her husband during a video call while he’s in ICE detention. He’s been detained by ICE for almost two months. She was brought to the US from Mexico as a young child. Her 34-year-old husband was born in El Salvador and has lived in the US since he was thirteen. Their children are US citizens. He’s owned a construction company, and did work for Habitat for Humanity to build homes for those in need in Indiana. Local police arrested him for driving without a license. He was transferred into ICE custody and moved to a detention center in Kentucky.

“I hope they know that you’re not hurting the adults,” she said after her video call. “Trust me. I know any adult can go through the pain that I’ve been through. But the damage that’s done to the kids is something you cannot take back.”

Two weeks after our meeting, her husband was released from detention.

An Indiana woman recounts the heart-wrenching experience of her husband being detained by ICE.

The Clay County Jail, across from the historic courthouse in the rural town of Brazil, Indiana, began detaining immigrants for ICE in 2013.Greg Constantine

When lawmakers in neighboring Illinois banned immigration detention throughout their state, the Clay County Jail seized on the opportunity and approved a $25 million expansion. Today the jail detains an average of 255 immigrants per day.

Open records requests reveal that the jail has earned nearly $12 million in revenue since January 2025 for services directly related to ICE detention. Eighty-three percent of immigrants detained in the jail have no criminal record.

Clay County Jail

Screenshots from two video chats with a 31-year-old detained for eight months in Clay County Jail.Greg Constantine

This 31-year-old man was brought to the US with his family when he was five years old. Everyone in his family has legal status. His siblings are US-born citizens. He should have received legal permanent residency in 2013, but it took years for his status to be adjusted, so he remained undocumented. In 2017, he was detained by ICE, but a judge approved a bond for his release. He spent more than eight years on bond waiting for his status to be adjusted. On October 2, 2025, during ICE’s ‘Midway Blitz’ operation in Chicago, ICE agents arrested him while he was standing on the sidewalk holding an advertising sign for a furniture store and detained him for eight months at the Clay County Jail while he fought his case.

“Being stuck in this facility usually breaks a person,” he said during a video call. “So I try not to make too [many] calls to my family and loved ones, like compared to other people, because I know that it hurts me more than it helps me, because I’m stuck here.”

Ten minutes before our second call, he found out he was going to be released.

Hear how being in an ICE detention facility “usually breaks” a person.

Corydon

Downtown Corydon, Indiana.Greg Constantine

The town of Corydon in southeastern Indiana has a population of 3,150. In September 2025, the Corydon Police Department signed a 287(g) agreement with ICE. Leaked documents reveal how 280 law enforcement agencies, including three in Indiana, have received or stand to receive a share of over $250 million in funding as a direct result of 287(g) agreements. The Corydon Police Department has already received $130,015, and is set to receive an additional $846,350 from DHS for salaries and incentives.

Corydon Police Chief Matt Kitterman contends that the 287(g) funding provides valuable training for his officers as well as resources for procuring new equipment and upgrading old equipment, such as outdated body armor. The Corydon Police Department has only nine officers and no jail.

The entrance to the Minton-Capehart Federal Building, where the Indianapolis immigration court is located.Greg Constantine

“I have represented people in different courts, in different states, but nothing like the Indianapolis court,” an Indianapolis-based immigration lawyer told me. “I cannot believe what is happening. It’s unbelievable the level of impunity that we are observing. In my mind, it’s like, ‘God, please give me strength to handle what I know is about to happen in this courtroom’. It’s like walking into a prison. You’re treated like you are in prison when you’re there.”

“I have represented people in different courts, in different states, but nothing like the Indianapolis court.”

The lawyer is one of four immigration attorneys I’ve spoken with who have filed formal complaints against two immigration judges in the Indianapolis court.

Materials calling for the end of immigration detention at the Miami Correctional Facility are displayed by a group of protestors at a demonstration in the town of Carmel on May 16, 2026.Greg Constantine

“Courage is doing something that you’re afraid to do, but doing it anyway, right?” a mother and resident of Carmel told me. “I think there’s a lot of people of privilege here who have been given privileges in this system; who have never had to fight against it because we’ve always benefited from it. What’s happening to immigrants is also the alarm bells of eventually what’s going to come for everybody else if you dare to speak out.”

Local residents, including retired teacher Suzie, protest in front of the Clark County Jail in Jeffersonville, Indiana. The county jail detains more than 80 immigrants per day. Ninety percent of those immigrants have no criminal record. Since it began detaining immigrants in April 2025, the jail has made more than $2,773,690 in ICE revenue.Greg Constantine

More than 50 people gather outside the private charter terminal of the Indianapolis International Airport on April 25, 2026, and protest the use of the airport for ICE flights. More than eighty ICE flights have flown out of the airport so far in 2026.Greg Constantine

More than 200 demonstrators march from the Indiana Statehouse to Circle Monument in downtown Indianapolis on May Day, May 1, 2026, demanding the abolition of ICE and immigration detention, the halting of ICE flights through the Indianapolis airport, and an end to assaults against immigrant communities throughout Indiana.Greg Constantine

Miguel Avila

There are not enough words to describe the horrendous situation people live in there.

You can see it on their eyes, the broken souls. They lost everything.

They lost their property, their jobs, their families. They lost every single thing.

Miguel Avila talks with other volunteers at a local restaurant after the group he works with spent several hours visiting immigrants detained by ICE in the Clay County Jail in Brazil, Indiana.

Avila himself spent nine months detained by ICE before being released on bond. The group supports people held by ICE with visits, information, and by providing resources to them and their families.

“Those places are designed to break morally, mentally, spiritually, physically.,” Avila said to me. There are “not enough words to describe the horrendous situation that people live in there,” he said.

Miguel Avila talks about his time in ICE detention and the deplorable conditions he encountered.

The office of Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita at the Indiana Statehouse.Greg Constantine

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita described the passing of the state’s FAIRNESS Act as “Indiana’s shot heard around the world in our ongoing fight against illegal immigration. We have put illegal aliens and anyone thinking of coming here unlawfully on notice.”

According to the ACLU of Indiana, the bill grants Rokita’s office ‘sweeping new power to punish schools, hospitals and local governments’ and ‘threatens immigrant communities’ access to care, education, and basic public safety.’

The office of Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith, May 13, 2026: framed photos of Beckwith and Gov. Mike Braun; a God over One Nation plaque; copies of the Founder’s Bible; The History of Christianity and the Psalms of King David on his desk; statues of Moses and the Lord’s Prayer beneath a painting of George Washington. Not shown: a framed reproduction of the pro-Trump artist Jon McNaughton’s painting Legacy of Hope.Greg Constantine

Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith is a far-right conservative who proudly identifies as a Christian nationalist. A strong supporter of the FAIRNESS Act, Beckwith has a history of anti-immigrant comments; at town hall meetings in August 2025 he said that undocumented people “do not have a right to see a judge” and “do not get constitutional rights.”

In May, on the Christian streaming program FlashPoint, Beckwith said he “hated Islam” and described it as a “demonic death cult.” He also said Americans need to be given “permission to hate again.”

Demonstrators gather at the Indiana state capitol building in downtown Indianapolis on May Day.Greg Constantine

Since 2025, almost forty state agencies, sheriffs and local police departments in Indiana have signed agreements with ICE. Many serve towns of fewer than 3,000 people. Apart from the large-scale enforcement actions seen in Illinois during 2025’s “Operation Midway Blitz” and in Minnesota during “Operation Metro Surge” in early 2026, ICE data reveals more immigrants have been arrested in Indiana the past two years than in any other Midwestern state.

Prior to 2025, only one county jail in Indiana detained immigrants for ICE. Now there are five. Several generate millions in ICE-related revenue per year. In September, the Indiana Department of Corrections signed a deal with DHS to detain up to 1,000 immigrants per day in an unused section of the Miami Correctional Facility in the town of Bunker Hill. The maximum-security state prison is now one of the largest ICE detention facilities in the Midwest.

Two immigrants in their fifties, Lorth Sim, from Cambodia and Tuan Van Bui, from Vietnam, have died in ICE custody at that prison. Commanding a daily rate of $291 per immigrant (four times more than the jail receives per state inmate), Indiana estimates it could make up to $213 million in revenue over the life of the two-year contract.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, an unmarked SUV escorts white and black vans through special security fencing at the private charter terminal of the Indianapolis International Airport, where the Indianapolis Airport Authority has permitted ICE to operate flights for over a year. More than 80 ICE flights have departed so far in 2026. One morning, several buses drop off athletes and coaching staff from Indiana University and Purdue University at the charter terminal. Not long after arriving, the teams file onto planes that fly them to Lincoln, Nebraska to compete in the 2026 Big Ten Track and Field Championships. An hour later, shackled immigrants shuffle out of the same terminal, across the tarmac and up the open-air staircase, where they board an Eastern Air Express flight bound for Alexandria, Louisiana, one of the county’s largest hubs for ICE deportation flights.

In downtown Indianapolis, in a nondescript hallway on the sixth floor of the Minton-Capehart Federal Building, seven Trump-appointed immigration judges decide the fate of immigrant families and those already in detention or with removal orders. The Indianapolis immigration court opened in January 2025. It has already established a record as one of the toughest in the nation. In 2026, immigration judges in the Indianapolis court have denied 93 percent of the asylum cases brought before them. “Thank God you are here to witness what happens in these courtrooms,” an immigration lawyer whispered to me before a proceeding.

Amid that antagonistic environment, a community of non-profits, immigrant-led groups, faith-based organizations, lawyers, service providers, activists and volunteers work vigilantly to support families and communities and resist Indiana’s complicity with ICE.

“Every bed in one of these detention centers represents a broken family,” Stuart Mora, of the Indiana Organizing Project, said to me as we drove to visit one of those families and deliver materials to local organizers in Bloomington ahead of a state-wide day of action calling for the end of ICE detention at the Miami Correctional Facility.

Father Jim Farrell

When are we going to have a voice, a common voice, that everybody would say this to our representatives?

Stop spending billions of dollars on deporting people and start figuring out legislation that will give these folks a path to citizenship that we can all live with.

Father Jim Farrell from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis leads a Catholic Mass at the ICE processing office in Indianapolis.

Vans line up and enter the tarmac of the private charter terminal at the Indianapolis International Airport on Saturday, May 8, 2026. They carry immigrants detained by ICE in Indiana and Kentucky. The ICE flight takes the immigrants to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, where ICE operates the country’s largest immigration detention center, Camp East Montana Detention Facility. The sprawling tent detention camp has the capacity to hold up to 5,000 people and serves as a hub for deportations.Greg Constantine

On May 11, 2026, nearly thirty immigrants in shackles board ICE flight N668CP. The flight originated in Akron, Ohio. Immigrants were loaded into the plane during stops in Bedford, Massachusetts, and then Indianapolis. The flight departed at 2:09 p.m., bound for an ICE processing facility in Alexandria, Louisiana.Greg Constantine

I keep in touch with Joanna. One Saturday, I send a message to ask how Manuel’s immigration hearing went the day before. “Unfortunately, it did not go well,” Joanna replies. “My husband’s cancellation of deportation was not approved and he will be deported…We are being forced to sell our house, sell our cars, close the business and move to Honduras…The judge literally said I am a well-educated woman and it wouldn’t be hard for me to find a job and support my children without my husband.”

“I spent the day crying, trying to figure things out, process…that this was reality, was happening, [what] seems like a nightmare. I just immediately started packing all our stuff.”

Later the same day, we talk on the phone. “I spent the day crying, trying to figure things out, processing everything, that this was reality, was happening, that seems like a nightmare,” she says. “I just immediately started packing all of our stuff.” The conversation is crushing.

Joanna explains how a judge’s ruling means she will have to sell their family home and move.

One week later, when a daily flight operated by United Airlines departs from Indianapolis to Houston, Joanna and her two boys are on it. I’m in Houston already, Joanna texts me. We’re waiting to get on our last flight to Honduras. I’m still waiting for my husband to be deported. I don’t know what is taking so long. One son sits in the aisle, the other by the window, Joanna between them. Three US citizens from Indiana, forced to leave the country of their birth. Soon, the United States quickly gives way to the international waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile, ICE keeps Manuel at the Clay County Jail in Brazil, Indiana. He doesn’t know when he will be deported. The jail continues to earn $85 each day Manuel remains there. In just eighty days, the county has made nearly $7,000 from his detention alone.

“It’s sad to have lost many things here in this place we have lived,” Manuel shares with me during a video call. He looks tired, fatigued, almost completely empty. “It hurts me a lot to leave Indiana. We had a very good life. I feel very sad for my children because they have a lot of friends and don’t want to leave their classmates. The most difficult part is the sacrifice my family is making to be with me. That my wife has to leave everything. All her life, everything that is her life. To risk herself to leave with me and have to start again. But I will fight for them, to give my children a good life and, mainly, a new beginning.”

Later that night, Manuel disappears from the Clay County jail inmate roster. Joanna doesn’t know where he is. The next day, another ICE flight departs from Indianapolis. Over the next seven days, he appears and disappears in the ICE online system at detention centers in Louisiana and Texas. Joanna and I exchange messages each day. Early one morning, a flight departs Texas for Honduras. After inputting Manuel’s personal information, the ICE online system displays: “Search Results: 0. Your search has resulted in zero (0) matching records.” I receive a message from Joanna eight hours later: He has arrived thank God. I’m on my way over there.

I think of Joanna, Manuel and their two boys seeing each other for the first time in over three months. Of this American family from Indiana, traumatized, then exiled and reuniting in this foreign place. I immediately think of the cardboard shipping box in Joanna’s house the night I first met her, and I’m reminded of the conviction in her voice when she said, “We are the American community already.”

Javier and Bobby

Two sisters play in the front yard of their older brother’s home in southern Indiana. Their father, Javier. is in immigration detention. Greg Constantine

Javier, 67, is originally from Mexico. He has lived in the US for more than thirty years and has spent many of those years trying to regularize his status. On April 13, 2026, local police arrested Javier for missing a probation court date, which was later attributed to a miscommunication between the court and his probation officer. He was released, but ICE immediately placed him in immigration detention. The girls’ mother passed away several years ago. Javier’s 27-year-old son Bobby, from his first marriage, now holds the responsibility of taking care of the two young girls.

“I never expected to have to take care of two other kids,” Bobby said to me when we talked. “They ask me all the time, ‘Where’s dad?’ I don’t want to tell them the truth because, I mean, they’re young.”

Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, Javier told Bobby he was not feeling well. Days later, Bobby found out his father had a stroke while in ICE detention. He was transferred to a local hospital, then returned to the jail several days later. Hospital and jail staff both refused to provide Bobby with an update on his father’s condition.

Bobby’s father Javier is in detention after having a stroke. Javier witnessed an attempted suicide in detention.

Stuart Mora gathers materials for an upcoming statewide day of action calling for the end of ICE detention at Miami Correctional Facility. Greg Constantine

Stuart Mora is the lead organizer of the Indiana Organizing Project, a statewide network of organizations invested in ending immigration detention in Indiana and assisting families who have been affected by immigration enforcement. Community actions and pressure organized by Mora and others led to the Marion County Sheriff, in Indianapolis, dramatically reducing ICE detention in the facility. “Every bed in one of these detention centers represents a broken family,” Mora says.

Joanna

Three weeks after I met and took this photo of Joanna and her boys, an immigration judge denied her husband’s request to cancel his deportation.Greg Constantine

“The judge said, yeah, I’m gonna go through barriers and hardship, but it’s not extreme. He said I can easily get a job because I’m well educated, and we’re gonna be okay without my husband. The rest of the day after the hearing, I just spent the day crying, trying to figure out and process everything that was this reality that was happening that seems like a nightmare.”

A cardboard shipping box of Joanna and her family’s belongings in their home. While waiting for her husband to be deported, Joanna closed their business, sold property, and left everything behind. She and her two sons, all US citizens, flew to Honduras on June 12, 2025.

Her husband was deported to Honduras on June 23, 2025.Greg Constantine

Greg Constantine produced this work as part of the 2026 Bertha Challenge fellowship. All photos, text, and audio by Greg Constantine.