Jaime Pasillas visits with his aunt and cousin June 5, 2025, in Indianapolis. (Jenna Watson/Mirror Indy)
Jaime Pasillas dreams of becoming a criminal defense lawyer.
The 18-year-old joined the mock trial team at Arsenal Tech High School, practicing for future days in court. His mom would come to competitions after finishing her shift operating a forklift at a warehouse. She brought him to Indianapolis from Mexico when he was 6.
Ever since, Pasillas has been all-American: spending days at the neighborhood pool with friends, learning to drive in empty parking lots, volunteering at church on Sundays.
But that life vanished on April 13, a month before graduation, when he was arrested for shoplifting at Walmart.
Pasillas, the son of a single parent, knows he messed up. But he said he wanted nice things for his little sister. He grabbed her favorite hair dye, cream and conditioner from the shelves and concealed them in a purse. Those items — along with deodorant, a car oil filter and a chocolate protein shake — made up the $48.81 that landed him in jail.
A Walmart employee said in court documents she alerted the police after recognizing Pasillas from a previous incident where he shoplifted a car battery charger.
For a teenager with no prior criminal record, a misdemeanor charge would typically lead to probation or community service. But Pasillas is living in the U.S. without legal permission. So when his name appeared in the local jail log, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents placed a federal hold on him.
They detained Pasillas there, waiting for a federal judge to decide about sending him back to Mexico — a country where he has no home. He is one of more than 10 million people who President Donald Trump has promised to deport during his second term.
“I’d understand if it was murder or battery,” Pasillas said. “But it was a small thing. I didn’t hurt anybody.”
Jaime Pasilla lifts weights while wearing an ankle monitor June 5, 2025, at his gym on the west side of Indianapolis. (Jenna Watson/Mirror Indy)
On the outside, the world of high school continued without him. He spent senior prom night in a cell. His heart dropped at the thought of missing graduation, too.
He wanted to walk across that stage more than anything. But, there was a bigger fight ahead: staying in the United States.
Laken Riley Act in Indianapolis
Pasillas wasn’t alone. He is among the more than 400 people who have been detained by ICE in the Marion County Jail at some point this year.
One immigration attorney likened Indianapolis to a “pit stop” in a growing network meant to deport people faster than ever before. Records show some of the people here are facing local criminal charges, but many appear to be held solely because of immigration status.
Get the backstory: How the Marion County Jail became a ‘pit stop’ for 400 ICE detainees
Late at night, Pasillas said he heard men in nearby cells crying for their wives and children. Many didn’t understand what was happening, so he translated the orders from the corrections officers in Spanish. Eventually, the other men would open up about how they ended up there.
“A lot of them didn’t commit any crimes,” Pasillas said. “ICE just came to their house to deport them.”
The same story is playing out across the country. The Trump administration, which promised to reduce violence and national security threats, has also arrested immigrants seeking legal protections at their court hearings, ended programs for refugees and even wrongfully detained American citizens.
Concerns about due process have only heightened since the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador. For nearly two months, the Trump administration defied the U.S. Supreme Court’s order to facilitate his return. On June 6, authorities brought Abrego Garcia back to face federal charges that his lawyer has called “preposterous” and “an abuse of power.”
That’s why Pasillas’s mom was scrambling to find enough money to hire an immigration attorney. She saw the landscape surrounding her son’s case — and she wanted him to have a fighting chance, even behind bars.
The Laken Riley Act was keeping him and many others locked up. The 2025 law is named after a University of Georgia nursing student who was killed on campus by a Venezuelan man living in the country without legal permission. It expanded ICE’s power to detain people arrested or charged with lower-level crimes and hold them without bond. In Pasillas’s case, the shoplifting charges fell under the act.
Days blended together as he laid in his bunk and thought about the mistake that might cost him everything. During fleeting phone calls, he tried to hold onto the voices of family and friends. The $48.81 wasn’t worth his freedom.
People around him disappeared often, sent to another facility or gone forever. Detainees wore black-and-white striped jumpsuits and appeared virtually from the jail for hearings with out-of-state immigration judges. Deportations were routine on Wednesdays and Fridays.
On April 22, Pasillas’s name was one of 11 called by officers. A van was waiting to take them to Clark County in southern Indiana, another jail with an agreement to hold ICE detainees.
Right away, he knew what this meant. “They call it the last stop,” he said.
‘I had to do something’
At Arsenal Tech, Pasillas’s classmates noticed when his seat was empty for weeks.
He was a class clown with a tight-knit group of friends. Some of them missed school trying to attend his immigration hearing, only to find out he wasn’t being held in Indianapolis anymore.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Ignacio Contreras, 18. “This was my best friend, and all of a sudden, he’s gone.”
They had summer plans to hit the gym and pool, and take a road trip to Colorado together. But first, the boys were determined to graduate together. The friends paid the necessary fees to text Pasillas every day and pooled together money so he could buy food from the jail’s commissary.
But they also knew Pasillas was facing a bigger expense: hiring a lawyer to fight his case, which can cost thousands of dollars.
When Pasillas’s favorite teacher learned he might be deported, she gave his mother $500 to help hire an attorney. This was an emergency, and money was already tight.
“I had to do something,” the teacher said. “Jaime got a misdemeanor and they ramped it up because he was undocumented. And that’s not right.”
Mirror Indy interviewed the teacher and later agreed not to include her name because she feared she would lose her job. Indianapolis Public Schools officials told her staff were barred from participating in this story.
The move comes as schools, universities and other public institutions face increasing pressure to comply with the Trump administration’s immigration policies, which now include arresting people at churches, hospitals and other areas once considered off-limits. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita threatened legal action against IPS in February after the district said it would not allow ICE agents on school property without a warrant or ask students to disclose their immigration status.
At Arsenal Tech, the school community continued to rally around Pasillas. His teacher raised a total of $1,800 for a legal defense fund. She couldn’t sleep until he was home.
‘Imagine your child’
The donations helped retain Angela Joseph, an attorney for Muñoz Legal LLC, an Indianapolis firm representing many of the people held in the jail because of immigration status.
Before Trump’s second term, Joseph didn’t worry about a teenager like Pasillas being detained for weeks. But now, as long as the shoplifting charges remained on his record, federal authorities could deport him at any moment. And it would happen faster if he was still in jail.
“Imagine your child is 18 and made a stupid mistake,” Joseph said. “Should he go to a country he doesn’t know and be separated from his mom and siblings? No one would want that for their own.”
More on immigrant families: ‘This is your children’s country’: Mexican immigrants at a crossroads
In court, she fought to get the theft charge changed to criminal conversion so Pasillas would be eligible for an immigration bond. Conversion, also a Class A misdemeanor, can cover shoplifting — though it’s typically used in cases where a person does not intend to permanently take someone’s property.
The charge does not trigger the Laken Riley Act.
It was a tight timeline. In a mere few days, lawyers coordinated with the local prosecutor’s office and asked a judge to formally dismiss the theft charges. Pasillas signed an agreement to have the conversion charge diverted for a year — something prosecutors typically offer for a first-time, low-level offense. As long as he pays a fine and stays out of trouble, the case will eventually be dismissed.
Then, the team turned their attention to Pasillas’s federal removal proceedings.
There aren’t many options, Joseph said. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, previously would have been a pathway for someone brought to the U.S. as a child. Before Pasillas was old enough to apply, though, Trump during his first term ordered federal workers to stop processing new applications. Pasillas also doesn’t have a spouse or family members who are citizens, or a strong asylum claim — though he could be a prime target for cartels back in Mexico.
“For all purposes, he’s an American kid,” Joseph said. “A senior in high school who could be thrown out to a country that’s not safe for him.”
The only solution stemmed from something awful: one of Pasillas’s family members was a victim of a serious crime, which could make him eligible for protection under a U Visa. Through this program, immigrant victims who help law enforcement and their families have a pathway to a green card, though the process can take years.
Attorneys began working on a motion to pause Pasillas’s deportation proceedings while the U Visa is pending. He’s out of jail, but the fight is not over. Ultimately, a judge will decide whether he gets to stay in America.
When Pasillas was released, his mother cried in his arms.
(Above left) Jaime Pasillas takes a phone call from a friend May 22, 2025, while waiting to be picked up for his graduation from Arsenal Technical High School. (Jenna Watson/Mirror Indy)
A friend picks Pasillas (right) up to go to graduation. (Jenna Watson/Mirror Indy)
Graduation
On June 27, two days before his 19th birthday, Pasillas could find out during a hearing if he is going to be deported.
But first, he got to graduate.
His green cap and gown covered his ankle monitor. In a sea of classmates squealing and filming TikToks, friends held him close.
Then, his favorite teacher.
“I owe it all to her,” Pasillas said. “Every time I called her from jail, she picked up like I was her own son. I wouldn’t have my freedom without her.”
The two hugged outside of Hinkle Fieldhouse before the ceremony. “I’m proud of you,” the teacher said softly. “You are going to do great things. And your story needs to be told.”
This article first appeared on Mirror Indy and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
