An environmental activist and her family escaped death threats in Honduras. ICE deported her husband anyway
Source: The Guardian
An environmental activist and her family escaped death threats in Honduras. ICE deported her husband anyway
Oscar, Ana and their children fled violence for safety in the US. Now Oscar, afraid and alone, is back in Honduras – ‘at the mercy of God and his will’
Maanvi Singh
Fri 13 Mar 2026 18.29 GMT
First published on Fri 13 Mar 2026 11.00 GMT
As soon as Oscar’s deportation flight landed at the La Lima airport in Honduras, he put on his baseball cap. On the airport shuttle toward the terminal, he pulled his cap even lower – trying to obscure his face at various police checkpoints.
His parents picked him up in a car, and drove him to a lodging they had arranged for him – miles away from his family home. He has hardly stepped outside since. “Because I can’t trust anyone – not the authorities, not the government, not a police officer,” he said. He has visited his mother a handful of times since the US deported him three weeks ago, and only under the cover of night. “They will kill anyone here. There is death everywhere.”
Oscar had fled Honduras in 2023, along with his wife Ana and their two young children. The Guardian is not using their real names, in order to protect Oscar – who remains in hiding.
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US immigration officials detained Oscar just 11 days before his family’s scheduled asylum hearing, and swiftly moved him from Maryland – where the family lived – to a detention center in Louisiana. Then, the government moved to sever his asylum case from his family’s – arguing that because his mailing address was at the detention center in Louisiana, he should no longer be considered a member of Ana’s household. When Oscar tried to apply for asylum on his own, the Department of Homeland Security petitioned to scrap his application and send him to Guatemala instead. And then, for reasons not even his immigration attorney understands, the government sent him to Honduras anyway.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/mar/13/honduras-family-immigration-deportation
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