In the fall of 2022, Melika Mohammadi Gazvar Olya left Iran for Turkey, took a flight to Nicaragua and then made her way to the United States. For Melika and her father, it meant weeks of walking and taking bus rides through Central America, an arduous trek made hazardous by extortionate smugglers, criminal gangs and corrupt local officials that has led Amnesty International to call the migrant route “the Most Dangerous Journey”.

Melika had made it from Iran to the US, but her legal ordeal on American soil had just begun. At a Texas district court, an immigration judge ordered her deportation to Iran after her asylum claim was denied. One day, after nearly 10 months in detention, Melika was escorted by ICE agents into a van with tinted windows and driven away. It was only when she stepped out onto the tarmac of El Paso airport that she realied what was happening. Nearly two years later, Melika remembers that fateful day with clarity. “In October 2023, ICE drove me away in a van – without telling me where we were going. Then I realized we were on an airport tarmac – and I started crying. An officer kindly told me I had the right to refuse the flight, and so I did," she recalled in an interview from detention with FRANCE 24.

Melika has been sharing a dormitory with around 70 fellow inmates. After more than two years and eight months, she has seen cell mates, mostly from Latin America, come and go, with many of them deported to their countries of origin within a few weeks. Along the way, the now 23-year-old Iranian woman picked up Spanish, improved her English and is now fluent in both languages.