Maria Pires, who was brought from a São Paulo orphanage to the United States as an 11-year-old in 1989, was deported to Brazil this year after being detained during a routine immigration check-in, according to court records, interviews and internal immigration communications reviewed by reporters.

Pires said she believed the adoption would be her escape from abuse at the orphanage; instead she was placed with a Maryland man, Floyd Sykes III, who she says sexually and physically abused her. Sykes was arrested in 1992 and later convicted of child abuse; court documents show he admitted to sexually assaulting Pires multiple times. Maryland child welfare officials briefly took custody of Pires and she spent subsequent years in foster care, juvenile facilities and prisons, accruing a criminal record that later made her an enforcement priority for immigration authorities.

Authorities and advocates say a critical administrative oversight — neither Sykes nor Maryland social services completed U.S. citizenship paperwork after the adoption — left Pires without legal status. She lost Brazilian citizenship at the time of the adoption, court records show, and the absence of naturalization paperwork meant she remained a foreign national despite decades living in the United States.

Pires, now 47, does not dispute much of her criminal record. As a teenager she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in a 1990s incident at a roller rink that left a youth in a coma and served time in prison. While incarcerated she was charged in additional violent incidents and spent years in solitary confinement, according to records and interviews. Her lawyers contend she acted out of untreated trauma stemming from childhood abuse.

After a lengthy period behind bars, Pires was released in 2017, entered treatment for anger management, stopped drinking and held steady employment in construction. Immigration authorities allowed her to remain in the United States under a conditional arrangement in the late 1990s — a process that required annual check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and periodic work authorizations.

Her routine check-in on March 6, 2023, however, did not go as in previous years. Rather than receiving another compliance notice, Pires was handcuffed, detained and moved through a chain of immigration detention centers in New Jersey, Louisiana and Arizona. Internal ICE communications obtained by reporters show an ICE agent on June 2 requested that Pires be prioritized for inclusion on a deportation flight to Brazil and asked that she be kept “as low profile as possible.”

Pires’ lawyers sought intervention from Maryland politicians, ICE officials and Brazilian diplomats but were unable to stop the deportation. She was placed on a flight that made stops to discharge other deportees before arriving in Fortaleza, a port city in northeastern Brazil. Brazilian authorities later transferred her to a women’s shelter in an inland city in the eastern part of the country.

Pires has spent months in the shelter trying to secure Brazilian identity documents and relearn Portuguese after more than three decades in the United States. She said most of her belongings remain in storage in Baltimore and that she depends on the shelter for basic necessities. Her attorney filed an application for U.S. citizenship on her behalf, but Department of Homeland Security officials say she was an enforcement priority because of her criminal record.

“Criminals are not welcome in the U.S.,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote in an email. Pires’ attorney, Jim Merklinger, said the government failed her by allowing the citizenship paperwork omission to go unaddressed for decades and then detaining and deporting someone who spent nearly all of her life in the United States. “This is a woman who followed all the rules,” Merklinger said. “She should not have been deported.”

Maryland Department of Human Services declined to discuss specifics because of confidentiality laws but noted in a statement that adoptive parents are responsible for applying for U.S. citizenship for children adopted from abroad.

Family members of Sykes have expressed remorse and bewilderment. Leslie Parrish, Sykes’ younger sister, said she often wondered what happened to Pires and that she believed her brother had “ruined her life.” Court records show Sykes, who had no prior criminal record, served about two months in jail under a combination of time served and a suspended sentence after admitting to assaulting Pires.

Advocates and lawyers for immigrants say Pires’ case illustrates broader shifts in U.S. immigration enforcement that have ensnared people who came to the country as children and lived most or all of their lives in the United States. During President Donald Trump’s second term, enforcement priorities tightened and deportations of noncitizens with criminal records increased, drawing criticism from defenders of longtime residents who lack formal citizenship.

Pires’ life exemplifies the complications that can arise when adoption, child welfare and immigration systems do not intersect effectively. She had little memory of her life before the orphanage and knows only that her mother had spent time in a mental institution. She recalls being marketed in part through a filmed television spot, an account consistent with later investigations into the adoption facilitation agency in São Paulo, which Brazilian authorities probed over allegations of improper fees and marketing practices. Agency leaders denied wrongdoing.

After her removal, Pires said she is focused on rebuilding. She has applied for Brazilian work authorization and is studying Portuguese. Friends in Baltimore described her as a woman who, despite a hard exterior, cared for others and worked to manage her mental health in recent years.

“I’ve survived all these years,” Pires said. “I can survive again.”

Her lawyers continue to pursue legal avenues, arguing that her circumstances — raised in the United States since childhood, lacking adult relations in Brazil and having endured severe early abuse — warrant humanitarian consideration. Federal officials, however, maintain that past violence made her an enforcement priority.

The case highlights tensions among child welfare oversight, adoption practices and immigration enforcement, and raises questions about safeguards for children adopted from abroad. Those agencies and officials face competing responsibilities: ensuring safety for children, verifying legal status and enforcing immigration law. For Pires, who said she yearns to know her origins and to return to the life she built in Baltimore, the administrative and legal failures of decades past have had decisive consequences.

Mauricio Savarese contributed reporting from São Paulo.