The Makoka brothers were waiting for the school bus when ICE came. On an unremarkable Tuesday, April 21, at the curb of their street in Diamondhead, Mississippi, their host father, Cliff Baptiste, noticed an unfamiliar car loitering nearby. His fear was immediate, but muted; Israel, 18, and Max, 15, had been living legally in the United States on F-1 student visas since 2023 and 2024, respectively.
Baptiste approached cautiously, asking the driver what he was doing. A neighbor had told him ICE had been in their neighborhood days before. Baptiste informed the agent that two boys from the Republic of the Congo were living with him, but that he had all their paperwork. The agent waved him off, he said, asserting he was looking for a deadbeat dad, not two young immigrants.
Baptiste didn’t believe him. This conversation, he said, was the first moment he’d had any reason to believe the boys were at risk. The bus arrived, Max and Israel approached, and within seconds, 10 unmarked cars surrounded the scene. ICE agents detained Israel and Max and in short order, zip-tied them both.
Neither of the Makoka brothers has been accused of or charged with a crime. Their immigration status was in good form as late as fall of last year. They are, by all accounts, model students and athletes at Hancock High School in Kiln, Mississippi, having recently transferred from the Piney Woods Country Life School in Rankin County. Now, they are in ICE custody, on track for deportation. Gail Baptiste, their host mother, was still in the bedroom when her granddaughter sprinted in.
“Nana,” she said, “they have the boys.”
Gail Baptiste spoke with the Mississippi Free Press on April 22, moments after leaving the Hancock County Adult Detention facility in Waveland. The last time either of the Baptistes had seen Israel, agents were hauling him into an unmarked car. Now he was with them in a visiting room, clad in the green-white stripes of a prisoner.
“ He’s trying to hold it together,” Gail told this reporter. “I know he was holding back tears. Probably because I wasn’t.”
Israel’s first concern was for his brother. ICE separated Max, only 15, from both Israel and the host family shortly after his detention. When Gail Baptiste spoke to the Mississippi Free Press on April 22, he had been gone for over a day. ICE officials told her he was being removed to a safe place, but neither the Baptistes nor the Makoka family back home in Congo could get in touch with Max, or find out where he was.
It would be days before they would learn that the Office of Refugee Resettlement had taken him out of the state, the standard protocol for an unaccompanied minor. Max hadn’t been alone before. But his host family—legally his guardians—were now far away. And his brother was strapped into a bus to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Facility in Jena.
As the days passed, the reality of it all set in. “These are stellar kids. Educated, focused, know what they want to be already,” Cliff said. “They’re good kids, man, and it’s sad that they have to go through this.”
‘They’re Out of Status’
What could have caused this? Gail Baptiste told the Mississippi Free Press that she immediately ran outside to hand the ICE agents her guardian paperwork, documentation made under the advice of a lawyer and signed off on by a judge, designating the Makokas as under the care of the Baptistes. The agents shrugged, informing her that the paperwork meant nothing to them.
“They’re out of status,” one of the agents told Gail. “They’re here illegally.”
As the day unfolded, the family learned that one decision lay at the heart of the chaos: the transfer from Piney Woods to Hancock High School, about two-and-a-half hours south on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Piney Woods is a private institution, a historically Black boarding school that caters to many foreign exchange students from the Caribbean and Africa. Hancock is a public school, the kind of institution where it is much harder to maintain an active F-1 visa and I-20 status, meaning legal stay for a foreign student.
Somewhere in the transfer, and without any warning reaching the Baptistes or the Makokas, the brothers fell out of status. In earlier times, the finding that the brothers had lost their status might have triggered an opportunity for them to more immediately fix the issue, possibly at Hancock High School or another institution more suited to maintain their visa and eligibility.
Not now under the second Trump administration’s harsh administration of immigration enforcement. Neither Israel nor Max had any notion that their status was at risk until the moment ICE took them outside their home in Diamondhead.
“ We should have had a warning,” Cliff Baptiste said in an April 26 interview. “We should have had time to fix this.”
Since 1998, the Baptistes have helped almost a hundred American and foreign exchange students get scholarships, many of them athletic scholarships earned in part through basketball showcases. As time passed, they began receiving contacts from across the globe, opening their homes to students who had opportunities to become scholars and athletes in U.S. schools. Never before, Gail said, have they run into trouble with immigration services.
At this stage, it is still unclear where the points of failure occurred, including which agencies or institutions sent and received warnings that the Makoka brothers were on track for swift detention and deportation. It may matter as they face hearings for bond and for final determination of their status—a chance to maintain the life they’ve been building in America for years.
Lindsay Williams, an ICE public affairs officer, told the Mississippi Free Press in an April 23 statement that “the matter is under investigation,” and declined to comment further.
The sudden capture of the Makoka brothers is yet another chapter in the second Trump administration’s supercharged detention regime. Full removal has gained steam in 2026, while still lagging behind administration targets, but a pitiless crackdown on clerical errors, edge cases and non-criminal residents has left the nation’s immigrant detention camps bursting at the seams. The administration is scrambling to open new detention centers, like one proposed ICE megaprison in Byhalia, Mississippi, that would have held 8,500 immigrants until Sen. Roger Wicker convinced the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to cancel it.
Thousands of foreign students have found their F-1 visas terminated for minuscule infractions—traffic tickets, dismissed charges, all triggering an aggressive push to have their status terminated and their time in the United States cut short through detention, actions that federal courts eventually reversed. Countless more have faced visa termination, with students detained and placed in removal for actions like protesting against the nation of Israel’s mass bombing campaign in Gaza.
And in a cruel twist, the Makoka family in Congo cannot come to be here for their sons. The Republic of Congo is on Trump’s travel ban, barring entry to its citizens since July 2025.
Thus far, ICE has not suggested that Israel and Max Makoka are accused of even a traffic violation, nor have they been part of any protest movement. But now they are separated, held in two other states and facing removal. They leave behind a community that keenly feels their absence.
‘Done Nothing But Make This Community Better’
Hancock High School Head Basketball Coach Conner Entriken expected an adjustment period when he first met Israel and Max Makoka. It should come as no surprise that the majority of his high school basketball team in Kiln hail from the Gulf Coast and not Brazzaville.
“It’s something you think of as a coach—how’s this gonna gel? They’re coming from a different culture, a different place in the world,” he said.
The boys started the year as strangers, an arrangement that dissipated almost immediately. Entriken speaks of them glowingly.
“They’ve done nothing but make this community, this school and this team much, much better since they’ve arrived,” he said. “ They have turned our locker room into probably the closest team that we’ve ever had. I think that really started when they showed up. The brotherhood and the togetherness that they’ve exemplified—it has been unbelievable.”
Pastor James Reardon serves the congregation of The Church at 112 in Pass Christian. It was fall in 2025, and he needed a guitarist. That’s how he met Israel, who went to school with his daughter. His talent, both on the court and off, was remarkable. But it was his character that most impressed Rearden.
“I’ve been a pastor for almost 20 years now, and it’s rare to have met someone as humble and respectful as Israel,” Rearden said. Even aside from his basketball career, Rearden saw a bright future in America for the young man. “He’s just incredibly bright. Israel’s mind is fantastic. There’s a college that he’d already committed to that he had a scholarship for.”
Colleges are better equipped to handle the maintenance of F-1 visas than public high schools, a detail that already seems to haunt Gail Baptiste. Israel was weeks away from completing his senior year. He turned 18 only weeks before ICE detained him.
The Baptistes are committed to fighting for the rights of both Israel and Max to stay in the United States legally. First, their goal is to reunite the family, behind accomplishing the return of Max from his custody with ORR and securing Israel’s bond so that he might depart the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Facility to come home to Diamondhead.
Stacy Campbell is a teacher at Hancock High. Like everyone else who spoke to the Mississippi Free Press about Israel and Max, it took no time at all for her to recognize their character.
“ They’re the kids that you see coming down the hallway with a smile on their face, giving you a wave through a crowd,” she said, explaining that they displayed a maturity and kindness of spirit beyond their years.
This morning, on a Monday in Kiln, the students of Hancock High School gathered in the school gym. The seniors came to receive their caps and gowns from their teachers, one last ritual before they graduate. Each student chose their teacher, having written a statement on their bond.
Today, Campbell waited with a cap and gown meant for Israel Makoka. Today, he did not arrive. Max Makoka was not in the stands, watching his brother on the court. There is a reason for their absence, for their intolerable separation. But for their teachers, their friends, and their family, it cannot seem to fill the gap they leave behind.
“They’re such a big part of the family,” Gail Baptiste said. “There’s so many people that just love these boys.”
