After being detained for more than a month in an immigrant detention center in Louisiana, a young Mexican woman named Giovanna Hernandez-Martinez decided to self-deport. A traffic stop for speeding was the beginning of the end of her stay in the United States. It all happened on August 5th, when Giovanna was on her way to work and was pulled over by an officer in Leeds, Alabama, after exceeding the speed limit by one mile. After confirming that she did not have valid immigration status, ICE took control of her case. “The vehicle was just feet away from colliding with other cars and changed lanes erratically. The driver did not have a driver's license, but instead identified herself with a card issued in Mexico,” Leeds Police Chief Paul Irwin explained to Alabama News. The young Mexican woman had lived in the United States since she was 7 years old. Giovanna arrived in the United States in 2007, when she was only 7 years old. She recounted that she couldn't qualify for the DACA program due to timing issues, even though she tried to "exhaust all possible avenues to legalize" her status. Despite the barriers regarding her documentation, she completed her bachelor's and master's degrees in Social Work at Jacksonville State University. For years, she dedicated herself to supporting young immigrants through the "Escalera" program, guiding them on their path to college and technical schools. She also collaborated with the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama (HICA) and even founded her own LLC. However, after being detained for more than a month, Giovanna decided to voluntarily return to Mexico at the end of September. A month later, she says she is still "processing" what happened. His life in Mexico, far from the support network he built in the United States, is now “a new reality that doesn’t seem real.”