When immigration agents stopped Luis Mayancela’s car outside a Lowe’s hardware store in Monroeville on a frigid January morning, two men bolted from the vehicle.

One escaped the officers after he ran across Route 22 and leapt down an embankment. Another was taken into custody. A third person in the vehicle, 22-year-old Mayancela, stayed behind — thinking he was safe from arrest after spending years and tens of thousands of dollars to ensure he was in the country legally.

Instead, Mayancela — who had become a new father just three months prior — was taken into custody and held in immigration detention for months before being released on bond May 8.

ICE data analyzed by the Post-Gazette shows he had never been the intended target of the immigration enforcement operation. Instead, he was labelled a “collateral” arrest — one of more than 1,700 made across the state between Aug. 6, 2025, and March 10, 2026, according to ICE records obtained and published by the Deportation Data Project.

Collateral arrests made up about a third of immigration detentions across the state during that time period, compared to about 22% of ICE arrests across the country. Among those who were specifically targeted by ICE agents, about 55% had a conviction or pending charge when they were detained, according to the agency’s records. But for immigrants swept up in collateral arrests, the data shows that three out of four had never been charged or convicted of a crime — including Mayancela.

“I just never thought I would go through a situation like this,” he said.

Mayancela, who came to the United States when he was 17, had been protected from deportation after obtaining Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, a designation that required a court to determine that he couldn’t reunite with his parents and that it was not in his best interest to return to Ecuador.