Gerson Turcios didn’t recognise the men standing next to a couple of dark SUVs outside his house one July afternoon last year. He figured they were lost and approached to see if he could help. A slim 23-year-old with short dark hair and big brown eyes, Turcios had just finished work mowing lawns in the pretty town of Rhinebeck, in New York’s Hudson Valley. The men asked if he knew someone called Jimmy – he did, but Jimmy hadn’t lived in the small, white weatherboard house with Turcios, his brother and his brother’s girlfriend for a while.
The men noted Turcios’s accent and asked where he was from. Turcios didn’t answer, so one took out his phone and snapped a photograph. The next thing Turcios knew, he was in handcuffs in the back of one of the SUVs and on his way to an ICE processing centre in Newburgh, New York, then on to a detention centre.
Mass deportation has been the defining mission of Donald Trump’s second presidency. In the year since he took office, ICE – United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement – has deported nearly a quarter of a million people from inside the US (half a million including from its borders) as part of an immigration crackdown. These forceful apprehensions, which have in some cases resulted in fatal shootings of potential deportees and bystanders, have resulted in protests – and sparked international outrage. Behind the statistics, though, are stories of hope and perseverance; of young immigrants who risked everything crossing rivers and deserts to build lives, start businesses and put down roots in communities that are now fighting to keep them.