Someone left a Bible on Samuel’s bunk. Samuel read it hungrily, blocking out the sounds of clanging metal doors, buzzers, voices of desperate men. He pictured his wife alone at home with their young children, wondering where he was.

Just days before, Samuel and his younger brother, Francisco, had finished a grueling 12-hour workday laying floor tiles in a new housing development southeast of Phoenix. It was a fall evening in 2012. Exhausted, Samuel, 25, sank into the passenger seat of his old white Chevy pickup as Francisco, 23, drove along a lonely desert highway toward their homes in eastern Maricopa County.

Then, police lights flashed.

The brothers were undocumented immigrants from Mexico who had lived in Arizona for several years. They were pulled over by Ramon “Charley” Armendariz, a zealous Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputy who was very good at hunting immigrants.

Armendariz asked to see Francisco’s driver’s license. He had no license, and proffered instead a Mexican passport. Samuel thought it odd that the deputy requested his identification, too, since he was just a passenger. Nevertheless, he also handed over his Mexican passport.

In a matter of minutes, both brothers’ wrists were ziptied.

In that moment, Samuel became one of an unknown number of non-criminal unauthorized immigrants wrongfully detained by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies from 2011 to 2013. Deputies turned over these immigrants for deportation in violation of a 2011 federal court order that forbade MCSO from taking such action.

In July 2017, Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt of court for defying the order. He was pardoned by President Donald Trump a month later.

In September, Maricopa County set aside $1 million to locate and compensate the wrongfully detained immigrants.

But the immigrant victims are largely missing, and many may never be found. Some were recent border crossers. Many were likely deported. And immigrant rights advocates worry those still in the United States might not want to draw attention to themselves as the Trump administration beefs up deportation efforts.

For years, the stories of the wrongfully detained immigrants remained a mystery. Samuel agreed to interviews with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting on the condition that his name be changed. Court records, arrest reports and county documents corroborate his story.

Samuel cannot forget watching his younger brother, legs shackled, loaded into a van and driven away. Driving without a license is a civil violation, according to MCSO. But the deputy chose to charge Francisco (his name has also been changed) with a misdemeanor, for refusing to provide ID, even though Francisco had shown his passport.

There was even less legal justification for Samuel’s detention. Armendariz cryptically wrote in his arrest report that Samuel was detained “because no record was found for him with the information he voluntarily provided.”

The same report shows Armendariz tried to turn Samuel over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the agency refused to accept him. Samuel was transported instead to a Border Patrol station in Casa Grande, some 40 miles away.

The ride seemed like an eternity.

He’d heard someplace sheriff’s deputies couldn’t arrest undocumented immigrants if they hadn’t committed a crime. He knew he hadn’t committed a crime. What was happening? He felt as though he’d he’d been kidnapped.

At the Border Patrol station, Samuel refused to sign a form that would have returned him immediately to Mexico. Pending a hearing before an immigration judge, Samuel was transferred to the Eloy Detention Center, an immigration lockup in central Arizona.

A sheriff’s contempt

Seventeen months after he arrested Samuel and Francisco, Deputy Armendariz suffered a days-long, drug-fueled breakdown. It ended with his death, which the Maricopa County Medical Examiner ruled a suicide.

Authorities searching his cluttered garage found drugs, identification documents seized from immigrants and videos Armendariz had taken of his arrests.

The discoveries later became a turning point in a massive, ongoing federal class action civil rights case called Melendres v. Arpaio. The case began in 2007 when Latino motorists sued Arpaio and his department, alleging Arpaio’s immigration crackdowns violated their constitutional rights.

Before the case went to trial, U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow issued the 2011 order barring the sheriff’s office from detaining non-criminal immigrants. After the trial, Snow handed the plaintiffs a victory, ruling in 2013 the agency had racially profiled the county’s Latino drivers and passengers during traffic stops.