“The Citizen”

They came for Maya at 6:42 AM.

It was a Tuesday. The sun hadn't even finished rising over the New Mexico horizon when she heard the sharp knock—three raps, fast and official. She shuffled to the door in sweatpants, phone still plugged in, coffee machine half-started. When she opened it, the ICE officers were already stepping in, hands on tasers, voices clipped and cold.

“Maya Sullivan?”

“Yes?”

“You’re being detained for violations of immigration law.”

She blinked. “I was born in Santa Fe.”

One officer shrugged, already slapping on cuffs. “That’s not what the system says.”

They took her phone. She never got to start the coffee.

At the processing center, she repeated it like a mantra: Born in Santa Fe. Parents: James and Angela Sullivan. Passport since sixteen. Registered voter. She even offered her Social Security number. No one looked up from their terminals.

Instead, a printout from her social media feed was shoved into her face—screenshots of a heated thread where she’d called the current administration a “fascist clown show,” and retweeted a satirical video depicting ICE agents as literal stormtroopers. Below it, highlighted and circled, was a joke reply she’d made to a friend: “At this rate, I’ll be deported before I can finish my thesis.”

That line was all they needed.

By Thursday, she was gone.

No court. No phone call. No lawyer.

The destination? A “correctional facility” run by a private contractor in Honduras—one of the countries America now had a quiet, shadowy agreement with. The justification was a “multi-national cooperation program to reduce administrative burden.” In reality, it was cheaper than keeping her on U.S. soil.

Inside, Maya shared a cell with seven others. Some didn’t speak English. One woman said she was from Detroit, but hadn’t seen a U.S. consulate rep in over a year.

Days bled into weeks. The fluorescent lights buzzed 24/7. The food came in gray, lukewarm trays. The guards didn’t wear name tags.

Back home, her roommate Jenna went nuclear.

She posted the ICE footage from the Ring camera. She called every news outlet that would listen, wrote essays for Substack and Medium, started the hashtag #FreeMayaNow. Her parents got the ACLU involved. Congressional offices claimed they were “looking into it.” Protests sparked in Albuquerque, then Denver, then D.C.

Finally, three months in, a White House spokesperson stood behind a podium and offered the words:

“There was a regrettable error in the processing of one Ms. Maya Sullivan, an American citizen. We are currently... evaluating options for rectifying the situation.”

But the damage had already been done. Honduras claimed the facility was “independently operated,” not their jurisdiction. The prison-for-hire insisted Maya’s contract was legally binding under international transfer laws. No one knew who was truly in charge. No one wanted to be.

And Maya? She watched the clip of the spokesperson from a contraband phone passed between cells. Her face remained calm. Her eyes did not.

She hadn’t been allowed to call her parents.

EPILOGUE

Maya was released nineteen months later. No apology. No compensation. No trial. Just a flight back to Houston, a sealed envelope, and a half-hearted escort who dropped her at the curb like a lost suitcase.

She told her story to every camera she could find. Wrote a memoir. Sued the government.

They settled. Quietly. For far less than she deserved.

But she didn’t stop there.

She ran for office. On a platform of fire and fury. The slogan said: “Never Again.”

And some nights, when she couldn’t sleep, Maya would stare at the ceiling, remembering the hum of fluorescent lights and the sour taste of institutional oatmeal.

Because she knew: for every Maya who made it home, there were ten more who didn’t.