ORLANDO, Fla. — For 96 days he was held inside detention centers in Florida and Texas after his April arrest in a Central Florida traffic stop.
Jose Luis lost nearly 30 pounds and grew increasingly depressed amid his long stints at some of the nation’s most notoriously difficult facilities. Finally the 60-year-old undocumented immigrant abandoned what he came to believe was a futile fight to stay in the U.S., and agreed to be deported to Uruguay, his birthplace.
Now, settled in Brazil and waiting for his wife to join him, Jose Luis worries for his four children who have chosen to remain in the U.S. But he doesn’t second-guess his own decision to violate the terms of the tourist visas that brought him to the U.S. from Brazil four years ago, though he never could have predicted how life would turn out.
“I know it was wrong to overstay my visa but I know so many people who did it and were fine,” Jose Luis said in Spanish during one of a series of phone interviews with the Orlando Sentinel. “I made so much more money here than I ever could in Brazil.”
The Sentinel is not using his last name at his request to protect the identity of the children.
Jose Luis’ experiences in recent months exemplify the travails of thousands of undocumented immigrants in Central Florida and around the country. As the Sentinel has previously reported, many who end up in ICE custody get there not because of criminal records but small traffic infractions, amid the state’s rush to crack down on illegal immigrants.
His extended stay in detention also highlights a trend seen nationwide, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detaining immigrants for longer than ever before even after many agree to leave voluntarily. In August over 61,000 people across the country were in detention, the highest number in history, ICE reported. Many have suffered far more than Jose Luis, experts say.
“That number is so high not just because of the massively funded enforcement … but also because they’re keeping people detained longer by cutting off avenues for release,” said Elizabeth Kenney, associate director of the Vera institute for Justice, a national organization that advocates for the end of mass incarceration.
Transfers to detention centers far from home, as happened to Jose Luis, are common as well, Kenney said. ICE has jurisdiction to keep detainees where it wants but does not disclose its reasons publicly.
“They might be transferred from some place close to home where they might have community who could help them in detention or secure an attorney for them to some place … where the legal resources are so limited that it’s nearly impossible to get an attorney,” Kenney said.
For a period from Jan. 20 through July 28, 148,000 detained immigrants nationwide experienced at least one transfer, ICE data analyzed by the Vera institute shows. During this period Florida sent the largest number of its detainees out of state, with the most common destination being Texas.
Jose Luis’ trip through the detention system began on April 1, when an Osceola County Sheriff’s Deputy on patrol ran his license plate and discovered “no valid driver record” associated with the tag before pulling him over in the Four Corners area near the theme parks. He rolled down the window of his grey Dodge van and presented the officer his Brazilian ID card. His 30-year-old son was in the passenger seat.
“My family was so scared,” Jose Luis said.
He was arrested and taken to Osceola County Jail where he spent a few days before being transferred to Orange County Jail on an immigration hold. Jose Luis has no criminal history in the U.S.
The family had been living in Davenport while Jose Luis and his eldest son worked as plumbers, a far more lucrative version of the jobs they had left behind in Brazil. But after Jose Luis’ arrest and detention, they fled the state. Jose Luis said they “had to leave everything that we worked so hard for behind in Florida.”
A few days later, Jose Luis was transported again to Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami. But he stayed just one week. During the period Jose Luis was at Krome, the facility had the largest overcapacity of any immigration detention center in the nation, and on at least one day exceeded its capacity by nearly 1,200 people, data from ICE shows.
“The first few days it’s like punishment because they put you in this room that is so cold it’s like an icebox,” Jose Luis said. “It was so crowded too like in rooms for 40 they would put 50 or more.”
Krome has long been plagued by allegations of inhumane conditions. In 2025, two immigrants held at the center died.
The most unnerving moment for Jose Luis was being chained for his flight from Florida, he said. The 120 passengers were not told where they were going, but landed in Texas, where they waited to be processed for over an hour in the Texas sun without air conditioning.
“I’ve only ever seen that in the movies,” Jose Luis said.
The detainees had arrived at Karnes County Immigration Processing Center, a privately run detention facility about one hour outside of San Antonio. It was Jose Luis’ home for the next 80 days.
Jose Luis said the center had eight bunk beds per unit, with a private bathroom and TVs. Everyone took turns cleaning the room daily because the services were poor, though the rooms themselves were OK, he said.
Still, food was scarce, he said, estimating the center provided roughly 1,000 calories per day per person. A typical breakfast was eggs and a couple pancakes. Lunch was often canned beans and rice or more eggs, with similar provisions for dinner.
One small positive: “I was a bit overweight when I went in and after coming out I was in shape,” Jose Luis said. “There was a lot of people who complained about being hungry so sometimes everyone would share food with them.”
Jose Luis found a lawyer to help him fight his deportation, but in the end, he succumbed to what he described as depression and frustration and chose voluntary departure. Such an agreement allows an undocumented immigrant to leave the country without an official deportation on record, which would make re-entry easier. This agreement is granted only to immigrants without a criminal record who have complied with every step in the process.
An immigration judge ordered that Jose Luis would have to wait three years before being eligible to reenter, he said. He left the U.S. on a commercial flight July 7, and chose to give an interview to the Sentinel once it was decided his wife would leave too.
Jose Luis’ own attorney could not be reached.
But Amanda Aguilar, an attorney in Texas with nonprofit American Gateways who has multiple clients at the Karnes County center, said her clients have described “starving” and multiple months in detention, sometimes even if they sign away their right to fight to stay.
“What’s really sad is the ICE officers are so aggressive once it comes to getting that [voluntary departure] signature but once they get that signature they’re not aggressive in getting them on a plane, getting them removed, getting them health care, getting them enough food,” Aguilar said.
Some clients have been held nine months just at Karnes, she said.
One of her clients, who has been detained at Karnes since July 24, told Aguilar the hunger she is experiencing at the facility reminds her of her native Cuba.
“She said for many in Karnes especially those who haven’t come from a food insecure country it’s very very difficult,” Aguilar said. “She said for her it feels like they’re trying to break her like the Cuban government tries to break you by starving you.”
Karnes County center is operated by a private Boca Raton-based company, GEO Group, which runs over four dozen immigration detention centers nationwide. The center has racked up allegations of negligent medical care and crumbling infrastructure, according to sworn declarations by detainees filed in federal court and obtained by the Miami Herald.
One detainee at Karnes said after he was arrested by ICE in Pompano Beach he had a fracture in his tibia and was taken to an offsite orthopedic clinic whose “walls were falling down”, the declaration obtained by the Herald said. The doctor took the Colombian immigrant’s crutches away and said the swelling and pain were “mental”, the Herald reported.
In a statement to the Orlando Sentinel a Geo Group spokesperson said all their facilities are monitored by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure compliance with detention standards. Geo Group says it provides medical access on site at certain locations and at off-site locations like hospitals or specialists when needed. It also provides “in-person and virtual legal and family visitation, general and legal library access, translation services, dietician-approved meals, religious and specialty diets, recreational amenities, the statement says.
Jose Luis’ wife has chosen to return to Brazil but the family is split for the first time, he said, with their children holding onto the dream of a better life in the U.S.
“I’ve never spent a Christmas without my family,” Jose Luis said. “I don’t wish this experience on anyone.”
Jose Luis doesn’t understand his children’s decision to stay. His 26-year-old son had a degree in architecture in Brazil but now is waiting tables and his 30-year-old son is continuing in the plumbing business.
“I don’t want them to go through what I did,” Jose Luis said. “They believe that in the U.S. they can have an easier life and make more money.”
Today Jose Luis is working to restart his own plumbing business in Brazil, and is living with friends.
“I’m just waiting for my wife so we can rent an apartment here and start a new life again,” he said.