NORTHEASTERN U.S. — Ana María, a 23-year-old asylum seeker from South America, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for three months across at least six facilities before agreeing to deportation to her native country.

Her detention began after Canadian authorities sent her back to the U.S. in January 2024, following her attempt to seek asylum in Canada with her boyfriend. The couple had turned themselves in to Canadian police at the U.S.-Canada border. Canadian authorities accused her boyfriend of being a gangster attempting to traffic her—primarily due to his tattoos—and arrested him. Ana María was returned to the U.S. and immediately taken into ICE custody.

During her three months in ICE detention, Ana María was transferred between facilities in multiple states, including Louisiana, Arizona, and Texas. Each transfer involved being handcuffed at the wrists and shackled at the ankles. “The treatment is humiliating. They put you in chains – and they tighten them – to the point where they leave marks on your arms and legs, making it impossible to walk. They would grab you by the arm to force you to walk faster, and I would plead with them, ‘Miss, it hurts! Please! I can’t walk.’ We couldn’t even pull back our hair because our hands were shackled to our waists. And the chains were heavy,” she said.

Ana María recalled that when she asked guards in a southwestern U.S. facility to loosen her restraints because they were painful, one guard laughed and another danced in front of her. She described conditions in the detention centers as harsh: lights remained on 24 hours a day, food was often stale or rotten, and guards frequently yelled, even at night. ICE staff withheld information about where detainees were being taken. “They treated us worse than criminals, like dogs – well, a dog lives better than that in the US,” she said.

Ana María also said, “They were cinched tight to your specific contours. I mean, if they tightened the chain while I was standing up, when you sit down, you naturally get a bit of a tummy bulge. So, just imagine – you couldn’t breathe, couldn’t lie down, couldn’t really move at all because the more you moved, the tighter the chains would constrict. Or if you made a wrong move, they would suddenly cinch even tighter.” In another instance, she recalled, “Tears were rolling down my face because my stomach hurt. I begged for water just to fill it, and they were, like ‘later, later.’”

Ana María, who had no criminal record in the U.S. or her home country, left South America in 2024 before finishing nursing school. Her decision to flee followed the murders of two sisters by a gangster who had been one of their ex-boyfriends—a case that drew notoriety in their hometown—and subsequent death threats against her family. After crossing into the U.S. and surrendering to Border Patrol, she was released within a week under the Biden administration and granted a court date for her asylum case in early 2027. She worked in various jobs, including as a house cleaner, in restaurants, in a warehouse, and sold sweets from her native country, and hoped to eventually obtain a visa for her mother to visit. “One of the hardest parts of my detention was being unable to contact my family,” she said.

Before traveling to the U.S. border, Ana María and a friend flew to Mexico City and took a 40-hour bus ride to the Mexico-California border. During the trip, they were repeatedly stopped by police, identified by the bus driver, and asked for bribes. The couple later decided to move to Canada due to fears about immigration enforcement after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Ana María said her boyfriend told her, “In Canada, the situation is better, we will live more peacefully there.”