[Read Part 1 of this story here]
In late 2025 Mateo* completed his 14-year sentence at South Central Correctional Facility, a CoreCivic-run prison in Tennessee, and was handed over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. In 2018, ICE agents had visited him and informed him he had a federal detainer and would be deported upon release from prison. That was the last he’d heard from the agency.
Back in 2000, Mateo and his niece—both teenagers at the time—had left their family in Mexico and made the dangerous crossing over the border into the United States. Over the next decade as Mateo lived undocumented in Texas, he worked, paid taxes, got married and had a child. Now, rather than being reunited with his wife and daughter when he was released from prison, he didn’t know whether he’d ever see them again; both are US citizens.
The two ICE agents who picked Mateo up from prison took him to a detention center in Mason, also run by CoreCivic. He was booked into the system, medically screened and then placed in an open living area with six bunks. There was one phone, three small tables in the middle of the room and a connected bathroom with two stalls, one urinal, one shower and two sinks. The room measured 50 steps by 40 steps; he counted as he paced back and forth, waiting to find out how long he would be there or what would come next. Everyone in the room was awaiting their interview, and no one came back afterward.
“They want to keep you wondering what’s about to happen to you,” he told Filter.
He used the phone to call his wife, holding onto the hope that he could see her and his daughter one more time before he was deported.
“My husband was finally free, but not free,” Mateo’s wife told Filter. “I wanted to wrap my arms around him and tell him face to face that I loved him.”
She was prepared to come visit him from Texas. But when she finally reached a live person at the detention center after several days of calling, she was told visits wouldn’t be possible.
“I threw my phone across the room, I was so mad,” she said. “Then I ran over and picked it up, hoping I didn’t break it; I sure could not afford a new one.”
“[The agent] told me they would keep me there until I helped them find my people.”
After three days, Mateo was told to gather his belongings—sleeping mat, toothbrush, soap bar, towel, shower shoes. Two agents took him to a small conference room, much like the one he remembered being questioned in after his arrest.
“I hadn’t really slept much because I didn’t know what was coming,” he said. “I was so scared my legs were shaking. I knew these two men were about to tell me my future.”
He was told that within the next one to six weeks, as soon as a seat was available on ground transport, he’d be moved to a staging facility. Ground transport was how most people were being sent to Mexico.
A few days later, he was questioned by two ICE agents who told him the interview was being recorded. They were looking for his brother, and other relatives who had crossed the border undocumented years ago. As far as Mateo knew, no one else in his family had had any encounters with law enforcement. He didn’t give the agents any information.
“One was so mad his face was blood-red,” Mateo recalled. “He told me they would keep me there until I helped them find my people.”
The agents told him his wife and daughter would be “hounded” for information if he didn’t cooperate—that ICE could show up at their home or at work, and that employers sometimes fired workers for embarrassing them like that.
“Hearing them talk about harassing my family made me sick,” Mateo said. “I had to sit on my hands to keep from punching that asshole in the mouth.”
But his experience with law enforcement had taught him to not believe everything they were saying, so he refused to answer and hoped for the best.
After 11 days at the detention center, Mateo and four others were transported by van to a holding facility in Louisiana. There he sat for three days in a crowded room. Then he and about two dozen others were put on a bus and taken to Mexico.
Once in Mexico, he still wasn’t free. Mexican officials first needed to verify his citizenship and that he had no outstanding charges or fees. He was fingerprinted, photographed and given six pages of written questions to respond to—about his family in Mexico, his family in the US, where was he going to live, how was he going to earn a living, whether he’d been mistreated by anyone in the US while free or in prison or under ICE custody. He didn’t know what the information would be used for, so he gave generic answers to everything.
Those with no one to pick them up had to wait for a shelter to accept them before they could be released. Mateo was fortunate enough to have his uncle pick him up, with a sack of food for the hour-long trip home. Mateo took a bite and tasted his mother’s cooking, and burst into tears. Twenty-five years after he crossed the border, Mateo reunited with his parents, who are now in their 70s. None of them ever thought they’d see each other again.
“I thought my mother was going to squeeze me to death,” Mateo said. “Seeing my parents crying joyfully was a nice change from the tears shed while I was locked up in America.”
Once settled in, Mateo called his wife and daughter. They all celebrated his freedom, even though it seemed wrong not to be celebrating together.
For an hour, ICE agents questioned her about where to find various undocumented people they believed she knew.
Around Christmas, Mateo’s wife and daughter got passports and made plans to visit him in Mexico. They’d been talking about the possibility of moving there. But when they presented their passports at the border crossing, they were stopped. Officials told them they were on a watch list for human smuggling, and could not enter Mexico. No other details were given.
In February, they were awakened at 5 am by ICE agents at both the front and back of their house. When Mateo’s wife opened the door, armed men walked in and began looking through every room without explanation.
“I was crying and screaming for my daughter,” she told Filter. “I thought I was going to die.”
For an hour, agents questioned her about where to find various undocumented people they believed she knew. She said she didn’t know. They told her they would be back, and that they knew where she worked and might see her there, too. She packed a bag and left with her daughter to stay at her parents’ house an hour away.
In March, two ICE agents came to her parents’ house. They wanted to know if she’d been in contact with Mateo or with his brother. When she explained that she talks to Mateo every day, they asked to see her phone. She refused. At the time of this writing, she has not heard from ICE since.
“Me and my daughter are US citizens,” she said. “But every time someone knocks on the door, I’m scared to death.”
More than anything, what Mateo wants people to grasp is what this process was like for his family.
Mateo was one of many undocumented prisoners at South Central Correctional Facility, and they had been bonded by the fear of the unknown. Since being deported, he’s contacted some of his friends who are still incarcerated to describe what the process was like.
“Maybe they won’t be as scared as I was,” he said.
But more than anything, what Mateo wants people to grasp is what this process was like for his family. He and his wife didn’t want her name, or their daughter’s name, said over the phone during interviews for this story, because they know the prison phones are recorded. His wife and daughter still haven’t returned to their home, and didn’t want to reveal their location over the phone for the same reason. They are terrified that at any moment, ICE will show up again.
They pray that one day they will be together again, and have not lost hope. Mateo’s wife was given a number to call for further details about being denied entry into Mexico, but they’ve yet to reach a live person and are scared to push for fear of retribution. Mateo thought about trying to cross the border into the US again, for the chance to be with them no matter the risk. But his mom told him her heart could not take losing him again, and begged him not to go.
He got a job with a landscaping company, working on rich people’s properties; mostly Americans.
“I feel weird helping Americans’ lawns look all pretty, when they put me out of their country,” he said. “Sometimes I piss on the flowers.”
Name has been changed
Image (cropped) via Immigrations and Customs Enforcement