43-year-old Ramona Juarez was an illegal immigrant living in Arizona. In nine years in the United States, she managed to raise two children, learn English and find a permanent job in a small store. Local residents who knew Ramona speak of her as a kindhearted woman, with a wonderful sense of humor, who would work 12- to 14-hour days to feed her children and pay the rent for her small apartment.

One night four Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents burst into her house, handcuffed her, loaded her into a car with barred windows and took her to the Tucson County Jail, where she spent two weeks in a large cell for 70 people. Her "roommates" included con artists, thieves, robbers and drug addicts – real criminals with extensive criminal records.

After the ICE officially declared Juarez guilty and assigned her the status of illegal immigrant, she was faced with deportation. But she had to await her deportation not in Arizona, which borders her native Mexico, but in a jail in Michigan, which is next to Canada. She was put on a bus with two dozen other female prisoners for the 36-hour drive from Tucson to Ionia, MI.

After two months in prison, where Juarez was subjected to constant psychological humiliation by her fellow inmates, she was sent to Mexico.

Why am I recounting all this? According to Amnesty International, 70 percent of those arrested because of their immigration status await deportation in real prisons, where their cellmates are real criminals, like rapists, murders, and robbers.

Unwieldy machine that it is, ICE works so unpredictably that a Mexican dishwasher at a restaurant in New York could be sent to Pelican Bay – one of the most terrible prisons in California. A resident of Los Angeles could end up at a prison in Florida, several thousand kilometers from his residence.

“The process of deportation defies legal norms,” said Shawn Diamond, a public defender in San Francisco. “ICE agents have only two goals: to detain illegal immigrants without any possibility of bail and to send them home by any means necessary. If an agent somehow refuses to comply with these rules, he can be reprimanded and even fired."

It is no secret that the fate of illegal immigrants sentenced to deportation is carefully hidden from society and human rights advocates. 40-year-old Rick Marere, a resident of El Salvador, spent a year and a half in prison waiting to be deported. “My son, who was born in America, was about to turn 18. My lawyer and I intentionally dragged out the deportation process because my son would be able to help me stay in the country when he came of age. I was transferred from the prison in California to a prison in Kentucky one month before my son’s birthday. My lawyer stopped working with me because he did not have a license to practice law in Kentucky. This was done on purpose. As fate would have it, I was on the prison plane when my son became a citizen."

Ironically, an illegal immigrant who is in prison for a felony has a better chance of remaining in the United States than an illegal immigrant arrested because of status (or, rather, lack thereof). Nine times out of 10, the former will be released after completing the sentence, while the later will spend several months in prison waiting to be deported. So America keeps the real criminals and mercilessly kicks out those whose only crime is not having the proper documents.

Pete Howard, a Canadian citizen who overstayed his visa by four years, ended up in a Mississippi prison after he was unable to provide a police officer with ID. "I spent six days in a cell with six Spanish-speaking prisoners who did not understand a word of English," he recounted. "They took all my cigarettes and made unpleasant jokes about me. I later found out that they were members of a local gang who were being held on suspicion of murder. The prison guards just laughed at me.”

ICE agents gave Howard the chance to sign a voluntary deportation order in exchange for one week at a detention center, where conditions are better and the wait for deportation is shorter. "It was made quite clear to me that if I were to initiate legal proceedings and appeal the deportation order, I would be thrown into the most remote prison in America," Howard recalled.

“Right now an illegal immigrant could end up anywhere: in a state, federal or even private prison,” continued attorney Shawn Diamond. “In the eyes of law enforcement officers and the American judicial system, he is as much a criminal as the others. He could easily be thrown in San Quentin or Otisville. He will be outfitted in an orange jumpsuit and he will melt in with thousands of other prisoners. The worse the conditions, the better chance there is that illegal immigrants will ask to be deported."

One of the most widespread ICE methods for dealing with immigrant families is placing spouses and their adult children (if there are any) in different prisons. For example, a husband could be in New York while his wife is in Oregon and his son is in Kansas. And none of them knows the fate of any of the others. "If you agree to deportation, you will see your family in Colombia in several weeks," ICE agents told Fernando Pereira. "Think about your future."

When Pereira signed the required papers and was returned to Colombia, he found out that his family was still in the United States. But ICE agents had already convinced them to reunite with their husband and father through voluntary deportation.

Immigration forums, especially Spanish-language ones, literally abound with unbelievable stories from deported illegal immigrants. Each story tells of unbearable prison conditions, the deceitfulness of ICE agents, the lack of interpreters and a disregard for the finer points of the deportation process. For example, few people know that detained illegal immigrants rarely are allowed to return home to collect their belongings. Furniture, clothes, electronics and other valuables are all too often auctioned off by the government or simply thrown out.

One myth, firmly entrenched in the United States, is that if a worker whose documents are not in order pays taxes without fail, he has a much better chance of remaining in the country if he is arrested.

Really, although the law states: "Every person who works and earns money in the United States must pay taxes," there is no mention of lesser punishment for people who act so nobly as to pay their taxes.

“In certain cases, you can be saved from deportation by small children or close relatives who are United States citizens, but the fact that you have paid your taxes will not help," emphasized Diamond.

Hundreds of human rights organizations are fighting for better conditions for illegal immigrants who have been detained because they are lacking the piece of plastic (a state ID card or a green card) that would grant them American rights.

But the ICE continues to prefer to abide by the well-known rule of “No illegal immigrants, no problems.”