JJ had a five-year plan to turn his life around. 

After being released from prison in 2022, he completed an 18-month job training program with the Los Angeles-based organization Homeboy Industries and began working as a cook for the group’s onsite cafe. He enrolled in two different community college programs to study business administration and culinary arts. He volunteered with groups to help other trans Latinx and formerly incarcerated people get back on their feet. By the time he reached the five-year anniversary of his release date, JJ hoped he would have saved enough to buy a house with his sister.

He also wanted to travel more, and last April, JJ went to Thailand with his mom, sister and a friend. It was his first time outside the United States since he and his parents entered the country without legal documentation when he was a toddler. They later obtained permanent resident status, and his sister was born in the United States.

“I always told myself, the moment I was able to come home, and if God permitted me to get my life together, that I would like to travel with my family,” JJ told The 19th. “Being able to give that to both my sister and my mom — even if I knew that this would be the end result, for me to get deported — I would do it all over again, just to see them happy.”

JJ, who asked for The 19th to withhold his last name for privacy, was not particularly concerned when returning to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and going through the standard post-flight motions. He waited in line for customs, showed his passport and green card, and got his fingerprints taken. But then, the customs officer made a phone call and escorted JJ away from his loved ones.

The weeks that followed felt like a different kind of prison: five days in LAX sleeping on the floor and living off of vending machine food, he said. Then it was five months in Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, where it came down to two options: JJ could do a “voluntary” departure to Mexico, or he could challenge his case in court and risk staying in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indefinitely. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The 19th’s request for comment by the time of publication.

The choice was clear for JJ, he said, even if that meant returning to a country he hasn’t known since age 2. “I’ve been here since September, and I’m barely learning how to maneuver around. My Spanish is horrible,” he said recently from Mexico. “People notice that I’m not from here because of the way I speak.” 

In the second Trump administration, people with JJ’s background — a formerly incarcerated trans immigrant — have three targets on their backs, and the power of the federal government aimed at them. Trump has repeatedly stated that ICE, under his administration, will detain and deport “the worst of the worst,” particularly people who have committed crimes. A combination of anti-trans, anti-immigrant and tough-on-crime messaging by the White House depicts a country under siege. 

To carry out its mass deportation mission, the administration has ramped up partnerships with local law enforcement and correctional facilities that allow the federal government to take custody of people held in prisons who have already served their sentences. Even in states like California, which limit local law enforcement partnerships with ICE, federal law defines a broad list of criminal offenses that can make a noncitizen deportable, even if that person secured legal status like JJ.

The result is a system of “double punishment,” a prison-to-ICE pipeline that advocates told The 19th can be particularly detrimental for trans people. 

We just see trauma compounded on trauma compounded on trauma.”

Lynly Egyes

Trans migrants often face rejection from family, abuse, job insecurity or homelessness as a result of their identity, which increases their risk of criminalization, advocates say. In ICE custody, they may be denied health care access, face sexual violence and be deported to countries that are hostile to their identity. Even for those who attempt to rebuild their lives after serving prison terms, “ICE could use that years later to target them, pull them into immigration detention and have them deported,” said Lynly Egyes, the legal director at the Transgender Law Center.

“We just see trauma compounded on trauma compounded on trauma,” Egyes said. “When trans people are shuffled between systems such as prison into ICE custody, it completely strips them of any opportunity for freedom and connection with their loved ones and community.”

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It took three attempts for Nataly Marinero to secure parole from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It ultimately happened in 2023, and he was released after nearly 18 years of incarceration. The state’s parole approval rate was about 34 percent at the time.

During this process, the parole board assesses an incarcerated person’s behavior and activities while in custody and considers whether they will be a threat to the general public. The board considers a range of factors, including signs of remorse, past criminal history, age and plans for the future, according to the California department of corrections website. While in prison, Marinero took substance abuse courses, worked on getting his high school diploma, had a job as a clerk in the prison kitchen. He had not received a write up, an infraction in prison, in years, he said. Each of these factors help to build a stronger case for release.

Immediately after leaving prison, Marinero joined a reentry program in Los Angeles called A New Way of Life, where he received housing, a job and connections to other opportunities to help him transition to life outside.

Life felt good.

“Freedom — just to think about it makes me want to cry,” the 40-year-old told The 19th. “That’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Marinero, who came to the United States without authorization at 17, was aware that ICE had put a “hold” on him at the beginning of his incarceration more than a decade ago. ICE “holds” are requests asking jails or prisons to hold someone after incarceration so that they can be transferred to immigration custody.

“When you get to prison, your counselor would tell you when you have an ICE hold,” said Laura Hernandez, executive director of the California-based advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants.

“If you have an inkling that you may have an ICE hold, you tend to check every so often,” she added. “But sometimes ICE holds aren’t placed on anyone until right before they’re getting ready to be released. So people have to check like the entire time they’re inside.”

Whether the agency follows through on picking up immigrants with ICE holds on their accounts is largely a toss up. In Marinero’s case, he was allowed to be released from prison; he was allowed to join a reentry program and to live his life for two years without being arrested by ICE.

In January 2025, he received a call from a woman who said she was his parole officer. This struck Marinero as odd, because this was a different officer from the man he had previously spoken with. The woman demanded Marinero come to the front of his reentry home, he said. When he obeyed, ICE agents were waiting outside and took Marinero into custody. 

His legal advocates at the California Coalition of Women Prisoners, who also serve trans people, moved quickly to assess whether Marinero could make an asylum claim as he was moved from an ICE holding facility to detention centers in California and Louisiana over the course of two months. Ultimately, his legal team was unable to file an asylum claim before his deportation. In April 2025, Marinero was placed in handcuffs and loaded onto a plane. He was back in El Salvador, a place he fled as a teenager and one of the most dangerous countries for trans people in Latin America.

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Partnerships between federal immigration authorities, local law enforcement and state prisons have existed for three decades.

In 1996, fears about crime led to a wave of laws — including the 1994 crime bill — with more severe punishments and a historic expansion of law enforcement. President Bill Clinton signed into law two bills that created pathways to speed up the deportation of noncitizens with criminal records and broadened the list of crimes considered aggravated felonies. These crimes could range from murder and sexual assault to shoplifting and forgery. As a result, any noncitizens, including green card holders, with an aggravated felony record became eligible for deportation.

“It especially hit lawful permanent residents,” said Juliet Stumpf, the Edmund O. Belsheim professor of law chair at Lewis & Clark Law School, whose research centers on what’s referred to as “crimmigration.”

“We used to see lawful permanent residents as being able to remain in the country if they committed a crime,” she added. “But now, we’ve added a whole other level of penalty, for lawful permanent residents especially, because they’re the ones that are going to be most vulnerable to deportation based on those grounds.”

One of the 1996 laws also laid the groundwork for the 287(g) program, which can essentially turn local and state law enforcement into an arm of immigration enforcement. These 287(g) agreements fall into one of three categories, one being the “Jail Enforcement Model,” designed to identify noncitizens held in local jails or state prisons who can be transferred to immigration custody.

At the time of Trump’s first term, his administration ushered in a high — at that time — of about 150 active 287(g) agreements of all types. In the last 15 months, that figure has increased tenfold. As of April 10, ICE has signed 1,645 agreements across 39 states and two U.S. territories, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. That dataset indicates that 10 percent of these agreements, 171 total, fall under the Jail Enforcement Model.

One contributor to this growth is likely financial incentives built into Trump’s expansive 2025 so-called One Big Beautiful tax bill, said Karen Pita Loor, director of the criminal law clinical program at Boston University.

“Historically, 287(g) agreements were not financially profitable for these counties, localities, whatever jurisdictions. They weren’t making them money,” Loor said. “The bill created really attractive financial incentives that make 287(g) agreements much more profitable.” These benefits to local law enforcement agencies can include salary reimbursements, $7,500 for equipment and $100,000 for new vehicles.

Some states, like California, where JJ and Marinero lived, have laws limiting collaborations between local and federal law enforcement. But even in those jurisdictions, the more forgiving immigration policies often do not extend to migrants with criminal records.

Prior to Trump’s return to office, JJ and Marinero, who served their prison time and were on a path to rehabilitation, might have gone unnoticed by ICE, advocates said.

Now, for Marinero, “I feel like going back to the same time when I was younger,” he said. “I can’t dress the way I want to dress. I can’t be who I want to be. It’s kind of killing my self-esteem.”

I just want to be free.”

Nataly Marinero

Growing up in El Salvador, Marinero did not have a specific word to describe how he felt about his gender. He just knew that people called him a girl, but he felt like a boy and preferred loose fitting shirts and pants rather than dresses. Marinero’s religious family treated his self-expression like a curse that needed to be healed, he said. They told him he would go to hell if he didn’t change. People called him a “marimacha,” a slur for a lesbian or masculine girl. He was also repeatedly targeted for sexual violence.

“It was so bad that I wanted to try to kill myself so many times,” Marinero said. “I just want to be free.” When his uncle offered to connect him with a group who could get him into the United States, Marinero jumped at the chance.

Being back in El Salvador 23 years later, Marinero mostly works and stays at home. He doesn’t have friends, he said, though he recently found a boxing gym that is helping to relieve stress. In Mexico, JJ said he also keeps to himself and isn’t open with people about his trans identity. He said it helps that he “blends in” as a man and doesn’t get many questions or weird looks.

Next March will mark five years since JJ left prison. The five-year plan he mapped out for himself has changed quite a bit, but he hasn’t lost all hope. 

“I feel like I just came out of being in prison all over again, and I have to start all over again,” he said. “Just getting back on my feet; that’s really my fifth-year goal now.”