The hell of being a ‘Kavanaugh stop’ victim

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Nick began his life in the United States in handcuffs, and until a few weeks ago, he believed that’s how his time here might end. The husband and father of two young children (whose name has been changed to protect his safety) came from Colombia in 2022 and surrendered to authorities to seek asylum from danger back home. Little did he know that a few years later the dangers of US immigration authorities would prove just as scary when they abducted him from a Maryland parking lot in late October 2025. Alongside his brother-in-law David (also a pseudonym) and a friend, he was taken away in front of their families, unsure if he’d ever see them again—in this country, at least. 

Thanks to the violent anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration, and an assist from the United States Supreme Court, it’s now legal for law enforcement to racially profile people as long as they say it’s immigration-related. These so-called “Kavanaugh stops”—a term that entered the lexicon last summer when Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh published an opinion defending his vote in favor of racial profiling—continue to wreak havoc on communities, disrupting the lives of US citizens and non-citizens alike. Nick is one of them.

I had the privilege of speaking to Nick and his wife Kathy (whose name has also been changed) via video call a few times in recent days to hear the full story of the terror inflicted upon their family. With the help of a generous translator, I was able to get a rare direct account of what happens when federal agents decide on a whim that they want to upend your life because you have brown skin—and the miracle of leaving custody. 

This is Nick’s story, as told to me:

It was a weekday in October just before Halloween, and Nick and Kathy planned to take their kids to a pumpkin patch. Along with Nick’s sister and brother-in-law David and their child (with whom they share a home in Maryland), and a friend and his child, the crew split between two cars to hit the road. That’s when Nick noticed the change oil light was on in his car. So both vehicles stopped at an auto parts store just up the road to resolve the issue and avoid issues en route.

Nick came to the US from Colombia in 2022 to escape armed conflict and threats to his family, and Kathy and their first child joined him the following year. (Their second child was later born in the US.) After days spent traveling via bus, plane and automobile, he finally crossed the border and was moved around between a few immigration detention centers in Arizona. Some weeks later his application for asylum was approved and he was allowed to leave once a $3,000 fee was paid. Luckily a relative in North Carolina was able to put up the money and invited Nick to come live with him until he got acclimated. A few months later, his friend—the same friend with whom he would later be detained—told Nick there were work opportunities in Maryland and that he should move up there. So he did.

The original trouble for the family began some two decades earlier when Kathy’s family’s farmland in Colombia was seized by armed militants. At the time they had no recourse, so they vacated the land and moved to the city. In recent years however, the family learned they could file a lawsuit to regain their stolen land. But once they filed the suit, the current occupant of the land had to be notified by law. And when the tenants who had driven Kathy’s family from their home learned about the lawsuit, they threatened them with violence. And the family knew these were not empty threats since people from this same group had murdered her uncle years earlier. Nick and Kathy decided that if they wanted to keep themselves and their child safe, they’d have to leave. 

According to Nick, men with mechanic skills often hang out in the auto parts store parking lot that he stopped by that day this past October, offering customers help with car maintenance in exchange for cash. (The store just so happens to be one mile from the intersection where ICE agents pulled their weapons in bystanders, which I wrote about in September.) One such man offered to help change his oil, and the two chatted. Nick remarked that the man who usually helped him out wasn’t there that day, and the man helping him said that immigration officials had done a sweep there a week ago. “Don't look for your friend because he's one of the ones that was taken,” he said. (In an incredible twist of fate, Nick would later see the man in ICE detention, and later learned he was miraculously released.)

Nick then noticed an SUV with darkly-tinted windows approach the vehicles and noted that “something about it seemed suspicious,” but didn’t pay it much mind. Up until that day he hadn’t personally known anyone taken by DHS and the idea of being taken still felt abstract. But a few minutes later, three more vehicles pulled up and surrounded Nick and his group.

Masked men who he assumed were federal agents but who never identified themselves approached him and asked for his ID, work permit and social security card. Luckily he had all the documents they asked for with him, and since he’d been attending all of his scheduled court dates for his asylum case and didn’t have another one scheduled until November 2026, he figured he’d soon be free to go. Instead, they came back from checking on his paperwork and said “Put your hands on your back. You have to come with us.” They also commanded the two other men—David and Nick’s friend—to exit the vehicles, leaving the women and children to watch helplessly in horror as the spouses and fathers were manhandled. All three were put in tight hand restraints, put in a van and taken away.

Before being taken to an ICE processing center, the van made multiple stops. The first was the parking lot of a Checkers restaurant where agents spotted Latino landscapers; they grabbed three of them and threw them in the truck with Nick and the other two men. Then the agents drove behind the restaurant where Nick says they made sure there were no cameras, took the men out of the van, added constraints around their waists and ankles in addition to their wrists, and piled them back in. With one empty seat left in the van, they stopped at a local Hispanic market to find someone to fill it, waiting for a few minutes near one man before detaining him. Nick says he and the men inside tried to silently warn him, but it was no use: the windows were too tinted for him to see their faces. Soon he’d be right there with them, headed for the ICE processing office in Chantilly, Virginia. 

“It was totally just based on our physical appearance,” Nick said of how agents decided who to pick up—including him. 

At a stoplight en route to the office, the agents spotted men selling coconut water on the street. Nick recalls the driver saying to the other agent, “Hey, you want to take two more?” and the agent in the passenger seat replying, “No, we don't have space, and also I'm tired. Maybe tomorrow.”

Once at the ICE office in Chantilly, Nick was put in a holding room with large windows into the hallway that held around 25 others. He said officers would walk by and laugh as they tried to sleep on the concrete floor. Nick used his shoes as a pillow. “I wouldn't wish it upon even my worst enemy,” he told me. They were fed rotten-smelling food and only had access to one toilet in the room, which they’d have to use in front of everyone. Nick believes these were all humiliation and pressure tactics to wear the men down and force them to sign deportation papers. 

“I was offered the opportunity to self-deport, even though I had a pending asylum case,” Nick said. “Multiple times, they offered. It didn't seem to matter what your status was. If you were in that situation, they were asking you if you wanted to leave.”

At Chantilly, Nick met with an agent and tried to explain that he had a pending asylum case. The agent swiveled his computer monitor around to show Nick and pointed at a listed court date, saying “This one? This here? This court date? Forget about it. It's gone.” He did not elaborate on what that meant, and did not explain why Nick had been detained.

After a couple of days, Nick, David and his friend were moved more than two hours away to Riverside Regional Jail in Prince George County, which has an agreement with ICE to temporarily house some of their detainees. It was at Riverside that he underwent the official intake process where they collected his data, took pictures, and made him strip and cough to check for contraband. For the 24 hours he was held there, he said he at least got some edible food and was able to go outside to play soccer. But he was far from free.

Next they were taken to the ICE detention center in Farmville, Virginia. Nick would remain at the facility for the duration of his incarceration, where men slept in a giant room with 84 bunk beds. Nick said all the men were there for immigration-related matters and that they were made to wear different color uniforms to indicate whether they had or had not committed a crime. From what he understood, yellow signified that you hadn’t committed a crime, blue was for low-level crimes, green meant you had minor federal charges, and orange and red meant serious criminal charges and imminent deportation. Nick was given a yellow uniform.

During his weeks at Farmville, Nick said he endured harsh conditions. The air conditioning was always on full blast and he got a series of bad colds as a result. One night when he had an unbearable headache, he went to the infirmary to ask for some Tylenol; his request was granted 15 days later. And on top of all that, he said the racism against the men being held there was palpable.

It wasn’t until three weeks after his initial detainment that Nick was finally able to meet virtually with the lawyer Kathy had secured for him—just two days before a scheduled virtual court appearance where he had to let the judge know if he planned to self-deport or fight the charges (whatever they even were.) While he had moments of doubt from exhaustion and had heard horror stories of people being held at Farmville for months, he decided to stay and fight. 

At the preliminary hearing, Nick was given his next court date, which was thankfully fairly soon: the second week of December. “I was worried because I had heard of people getting trial dates in mid-January by then,” he explained, “so if anything happened with this one and it had to be pushed back, I didn't know if I could withstand all of that until mid-January.” He called this a “defining moment.”

But then something Nick called “a little miracle” happened: His lawyer let him know his petition for habeas corpus had been approved, meaning the government did not have a lawful reason to continue holding him. It was likely he would be going home to Kathy and his kids. The scheduled December virtual hearing became his bond hearing, and he was very nervous before. His cellmates encouraged him to stay positive “and they all cheered for me when I walked out of the cell,” to the hearing. They chanted “Colombia!”, their nickname for Nick. 

At the hearing, Nick got the final decision: He was granted bond, which was set at $3,000. He cried. I asked him what was going through his head at that moment. “That I was gonna be able to see my kids again and Kathy,” he said.

When he left the hearing room, some of the guys who worked across the hall at the facility’s barber shop peeked their heads out to ask if he won. “Yes,” he told them. They, too, started cheering. And when Nick got back to his room, his cellmates clapped and cheered for the rare bit of happy news. Two days later, he was released. He made the four hour journey back home to Maryland where Kathy and the kids met him halfway. A video of their reunion I was able to view showed Nick kneeling down to hug them tight while his older son wipes away tears. For this moment, they were together.

As for the men who were detained along with Nick, his friend was also released shortly before him. David, however, opted to self-deport, being forced to leave behind Nick’s sister and their child. Kathy said they struggle with major guilt because if they hadn’t had to change the oil in their car, they wouldn’t have been at the lot where the agents picked the men up, and David wouldn’t have been deported.

What comes next for Nick? His next court date for his asylum case is in March. “It feels like this kind of set me back in my asylum process because the final hearing was supposed to be in November, and now I’m kind of starting over,” he said.

Now he must pay double the rent because they’re without David’s income, and Nick has been unable to go back to work because ICE has yet to return his documents. He and Kathy are understandably afraid of him being detained again.

“That fear follows us not just in Colombia, but here,” Kathy told me. “The difference is that here there's people that we've met along the way that are good people and want to help us. So that's made a big difference.”

But the wounds of this harrowing experience are still fresh for the whole family. During a recent car ride, Nick’s older son noticed the car behind them. “I'm gonna sit correctly because there's a police car behind us,” he told his dad, “and I don't want them to take you again.”

If you want to help Nick and his family afford life expenses and legal fees in the aftermath of his and David’s detention, you can contribute to their GoFundMe here.