On a July afternoon, at her home in Sarasota, Lourdes Martinez runs her hands over the clothes hanging in her daughter's closet.
She's packing a suitcase to send to Mexico, where her daughter, Maria, will be in a week after choosing to self-deport.
"It's painful," Lourdes said in Spanish, "to smell the perfume on her clothes."
Lourdes last saw Maria in May, during a shift at the restaurant they both worked at.
"I told her, 'See you later at home,' but that moment never came," Lourdes said.
Police detained Maria that night because the car she was driving was registered without a license, according to a police incident report. Maria added that she was stopped initially for making an illegal U-turn.
Those without legal status aren't able to get a driver's license in Florida.
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Luis Castro, an immigration attorney based in neighboring Manatee County, said under heightened immigration enforcement, he's seeing more people being arrested for driving without a license, whereas "before, officers used their discretion to just write a ticket."
Meanwhile, a state law enacted this year mandated all counties cooperate with federal immigration agents through the 287(g) program.
The partnership means people booked into county jails can be flagged by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Local law enforcement can hold those suspected of being in the country without legal status on a detainer until ICE arrives.
Court records show Lourdes paid Sarasota County a $500 bond for Maria's traffic violation. She believed her daughter would be released.
Instead, Maria, 22, was transferred into ICE custody and sent to the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, within a week.
"I felt frustrated and helpless," Lourdes said, "because my daughter; she didn't do anything wrong."
'I don't want to keep living like this'
On that July afternoon, Lourdes answered a call from the El Valle Detention Center, the machine's automated voice informing her it was Maria.
The last two months have been difficult, Maria said. She's never been apart from her family for this long.
"I miss going to the soccer games with my brother, going out with my sister and my nephew, and not being able to see him grow," she said.
Through phone calls, Maria gave her family glimpses of what life was like in detention.
At El Valle, she said she shared a dorm with at least 100 other women. From them, Maria heard stories of ICE raids at worksites, asylum seekers detained at their immigration appointments, and those with work permits arrested when entering the U.S.
In the detention center, some worked for a dollar a day, doing laundry or cleaning. Money was needed to buy things like extra food or clothes at the commissary and to use the public phones or tablets to call home, Maria said.
A few weeks prior, Maria and her family spoke over the phone, optimistic the judge would grant Maria bond so she could return home to fight her deportation case.
According to Evangeline Dhawan-Maloney, who represented Maria during her bond hearing, her client had no criminal history aside from the traffic violation.
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But her bond was denied.
Dhawan-Maloney said the judge considered Maria a potential danger to the community because she had driven without a license.
"The narrative that the current administration has been pushing is, 'we're detaining the worst of the worst,' " said Dhawan-Maloney. "Unfortunately — just based on the data that we have — that is not what's happening."
In recent months, agents started detaining more immigrants with no criminal convictions.
By June, those without criminal charges or convictions made up the largest group of people arrested by ICE in Florida.
The night after the bond hearing, Lourdes spoke to Maria over the phone.
"Of course, I tried not to cry in front of her," Lourdes said, "but she was the one who burst into tears. She was devastated; she couldn't believe what happened."
Maria said the prospect of remaining in detention for an uncertain number of months to appeal the bond denial was unthinkable.
"Even if I get out, I don't want to keep living like this," Maria said. "Always living under the shadows, not being able to drive or ... being afraid of getting arrested again and go through this again?"
The combination of increased surveillance and state-mandated immigration enforcement has created an environment so hostile, many are choosing to leave on their own, said Elizabeth Aranda, a sociology professor at the University of South Florida.
"The fear and the chilling effect that this has instilled — some people just choose to pack it in and go home," she said.
Aranda said she's conducted surveys with dozens of immigrants in the Tampa Bay region in the last few months. Some have compared their lives to the lockdown phase of the pandemic.
"We invested in the human capital of this person that then self-deported, and so that human capital will benefit another country, and not ours. We're losing creative, innovative, bright minds that are no longer going to contribute to our society and our communities, and that's a loss."Elizabeth Aranda, USF sociology professor
Immigrants she spoke with are afraid to drive to work or church, places where they often find community, she said. But the fear of being apprehended by law enforcement has pushed many into isolation.
"When someone's crying through an interview, that's very telling of the conditions that they're living in," said Aranda.
Instead of fighting her deportation case, Maria chose what's known as "voluntary departure." This option allows an individual to "depart from the country at their own expense in a designated amount of time," and is only available to people without a serious criminal background.
It's preferred over having a removal order, or deportation, which comes with penalties, such as multiyear bars from returning to the U.S.
"Generally speaking, someone who has voluntary departure has better chances of returning to the United States than someone who is deported," said Denise Noonan Slavin, with the group Americans for Immigrant Justice.
But Slavin said each case differs drastically due to the complexities of immigration law and can depend on factors such as the length of time spent in the country without legal status.
Immigrant population declines
The exact number of people choosing to leave the country on their own terms is hard to determine.
However, the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank, found this year, so far, the number of foreign-born individuals in the U.S. has declined for the first time in more than 50 years — by nearly 1.5 million. The number includes lawful and unlawful residents.
Pew notes these numbers may be down partly due to immigrants' hesitance to participate in the survey.
The analysis attributes the drop to policies enacted under the Trump administration as well as the Biden administration's restrictions on asylum seekers in the last year of his term.
The Trump administration credits the downward trend to its enforcement operations and a campaign urging immigrants to "self-deport" through the CBP Home app.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said "tens of thousands of illegal aliens" have used the app.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the decline in illegal immigration means "reduced strain on public services," and "a resurgence in local job markets."
However, experts like Aranda disagree.
"We invested in the human capital of this person that then self-deported, and so that human capital will benefit another country, and not ours," said Aranda, "We're losing creative, innovative, bright minds that are no longer going to contribute to our society and our communities, and that's a loss."
Tarek Hassan, an economics professor at Boston University, said the effects of immigration are complex. In his research, he found that who exactly benefits from immigration depends on their education and skill level.
But Hassan said the idea that deportations leave a community better off is wrong.
"When you have more people, you have more ideas, and you have more innovation and more economic growth," Hassan said.
'Dreams know no borders'
Lourdes said life in the U.S. has become untenable under the Trump administration's crackdown. Her family is considering reuniting with Maria in Mexico.
But she doesn't think coming here was in vain. Lourdes and her husband crossed the southern border with Maria and her siblings a decade ago, a traumatic experience she hesitates to talk about.
"We came here for the same thing anyone comes to the U.S. for," Lourdes said, "our children, a better quality of life. Everybody thinks this is the country of dreams."
In Mexico, she said they were barely able to make a living.
"You work hard and make almost nothing," she said.
But in the U.S., you can work and live a decent life, Lourdes said. Every month, she and her husband sent money home to relatives in Mexico. Her children were able to learn a new language and get an education.
Lourdes holds up Maria's graduation cap from the State College of Florida, where she earned an associate's degree in business administration.
Written on top is the phrase, "los sueños no conocen fronteras," which translates to "dreams know no borders."
"They may not want us here," Lourdes said, "but that didn't stop her from achieving her dreams."
At the end of July, Maria was granted voluntary departure. Immigration officials brought her to the U.S.-Mexico border, where she crossed the bridge from Brownsville, Texas, into the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
After a plane ride, Maria reunited with relatives in the outskirts of Mexico City, where they welcomed her with a party and a mariachi band.
"My family, even though they didn't see me in so much time, they still love me as I remember," Maria said.
Amid the celebration, Maria called her parents and siblings back in Florida. Together, they cried, she said.
"They knew I was free, and they knew I was happy, and they made it possible," she said.
For now, her new life will begin without them.
