‘They tricked me’: Migrants were promised $1,000 to voluntarily leave the US. Some never received it

Pedro Mena and Shanna Loulendo both agreed to voluntary departure under ‘Project Homecoming’ but never received the promised $1,000 payment. Composite: Courtesy of the Lens

Germán Pineda, 32, just wanted to go home.

After his arrest by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in June, Pineda, a Honduran immigrant, spent four miserable days in immigration detention at Federal Plaza in Manhattan, sleeping on a concrete floor without sufficient food or a shower. Next, he was transferred to a detention center in Brooklyn, where staff treated him like a criminal, he says, though he’d lived in the country, working as a delivery driver, for 14 years. He couldn’t even call home.