While the prison population has begun to dwindle in recent years—the incarceration rate fell 13 percent between 2007 and 2015—immigration detention remains “one of the fastest-growing sectors of the carceral state,” said Kelly Lytle Hernandez, a University of California, Los Angeles, historian who studies the origins of U.S. immigration control.

ICE’s Secure Communities program—which began under former President George W. Bush; was expanded, then killed, under his successor Barack Obama; then reinstated by Trump—provides local police with a national fingerprint database to check suspects for immigration violations. ICE can also deputize local law enforcement to make immigration arrests, a power authorized by IIRIRA. Some 60 law-enforcement agencies across 18 states participate in that program.

“Local police are some of the biggest feeders into the immigration-enforcement system,” said Will Gaona, the policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. “And that’s more true in Arizona”—where Gustave was picked up—“because of S.B. 1070.” That 2010 state law, which has since been emulated in dozens of states, requires police to ask about immigration status if they suspect someone is in the country illegally.

In Gustave’s case, local police dispute his version of events. Phoenix Police Department spokesman Vincent Lewis told me the officers at the motel found two guns and recommended felony possession charges against Gustave and his friend. According to Lewis, the tattoo was not why officers had a “reasonable suspicion” that Gustave was undocumented and decided to get ICE involved. “We wouldn’t do that,” he said.

Before landing in detention, Gustave had lived in the United States since he was three years old. He told me he did not apply to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children from deportation, because he had been charged with shoplifting from Walmart. Gustave may still be eligible to become a legal resident because he is married to a U.S. citizen, but detention has already taken a toll. His wife, Ashantae Guy, told me the couple had been living at the motel to save up for an apartment, but their savings were wiped out when she got in a car accident on the way to Eloy. Gustave told me he lost his job at a metal fabricator because he is detained.

Courtesy of Ashantae Guy

Like Gustave’s conversation at the motel, unexpected or routine encounters with police can put black immigrants on ICE’s radar—regardless of their criminal history. “Even if you take the undocumented part out, I’m more likely to be stopped while driving or walking,” said 25-year-old Jonathan Jayes-Green, the co-founder of Undocublack, an advocacy organization for black immigrants. Jayes-Green, who is originally from Panama, is currently enrolled in DACA, but because Trump cancelled the program this fall, he’ll lose his status in January 2019.

Every time he walks outside, he’s “more likely to come into the criminal-justice system,” Jayes-Green said. From there, “it’s a fast track to deportation.”

This article is part of our project “The Presence of Justice,” which is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge.