“We were in waiting mode,” a Honduran immigrant based in St. Louis told me as she described her time being held in a county jail in Missouri. In June 2025, the woman — who asked to be identified by pseudonym “Mary” to avoid targeting — was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a gas station in St. Louis. “Dinner was the same every day, and waiting was the worst part because nobody tells you that you have to wait for such a long time,” she said.

Mary and her husband Jose (also identified here by a pseudonym) are both from Honduras. Their family is mixed-status: They have two children, one born in Honduras, the other born in the United States. During the first months of Donald Trump’s second administration, immigration sweeps in their working-class neighborhood of St. Louis created a flurry of panic and upended their lives. Just two weeks before Mary was arrested, Jose was picked up by ICE.

For a short time, they were both held in the same county jail in Phelps County, an hour and a half away from St. Louis, in central Missouri.