There are a lot of news articles speculating about what could happen to immigrants under a Trump 2.0 administration. Let’s hear some first-hand accounts of what did happen during Trump’s first term. These are the family separations that didn’t appear in the national spotlight.
“My skin itched of the mud stuck to my body, drying.”
A woman working at Corso’s Garden Center in Sandusky buried herself in a flower bed to hide during the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at her workplace in 2018. What started with an offer of donuts in the break room (a ruse) turned into a dystopian nightmare for people who were working and trying to take care of their families. “I never expected anything like this to happen. When I saw them coming, I ran. And I ran and ran and ran until I hid under a bed of flowers, and I buried myself under the dirt and cried in silence. All I could think about was my kids, I have three. A lot of us have some children who need us.”
Watch Rep. Marcy Kaptur relate this and other stories from the Corso’s raid during a House of Representatives floor speech and read this report from the Center on Law and Social Policy, “The Day that ICE Came.”
“They took one of my friends.”
Amber, an apartment manager, talking about an ICE raid on her apartment complex in Marion. “They never mentioned they were going to take my friend. It’s terrible. It’s horrible and heartbreaking. We’ve never had a problem with any of the people they took. One of the men, he was robbed a while back. He had a baby girl born in the US. He taught her to ride a bike right over there. Another man has three children the age of six and under. They don’t have a father now because of this raid.
“Not one person arrested is this raid owed rent. I’ve never had to file an eviction on the Mexican or Honduran tenants here. Yet, there are thirty-six white people here who owe me rent. One of the apartments had five guys living in it. They all worked hard to make a life. All of them were arrested and all of their stuff is just sitting there, not moved, just like it was when they were arrested.”
View Amber’s and other testimonies in SEVEN DOORS: American Gulag, a photo documentary project by Greg Constantine.
“It was like being rolled into a bag.”
A man being deported to Cameroon — a place he feared and fled — was forced onto a deportation charter plane by ICE agents who restrained him through a sort of reverse hog-tie device called the WRAP. “They tied my feet together, then they tightened the WRAP around my legs with three straps. They put something over my neck and around my torso and arms. They cuffed my hands in front of me and attached them to a chain around my waist. They snapped a rope or strap or cord from my neck to my feet. Then they leaned on my back and pushed my face toward my knees, and pulled the strap tight. My body was at a 40-degree angle. I was left completely immobile. I was forced into the WRAP while we were still at Prairieland Detention Center. I was left in the WRAP from around 10:30 a.m. on November 11, 2020, until we were somewhere over the Atlantic ocean that night….
“They eventually took the WRAP off, but I remained shackled all the way to Douala [Cameroon]—around sixteen hours. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t eat. All I remember is the pain and the yelling of the officers. I was detained in the U.S. for two years and four months. When I arrived in [Cameroon], I was arrested at the airport and taken to police detention for further investigation. I was detained for 12 days. There were open sores [on] my wrists where the ICE cuffs had cut into my skin. In detention I had no water or soap to keep them clean. They got infected. I was in a cell with many men. There was no toilet. My family finally managed to get me out and now I am in hiding in a third country. I cannot remember what [it is] like to feel safe.”
Read more in this Grio article and complaint filed by Texas A&M University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic with Black Alliance for Just Immigration, UndocuBlack, Haitian Bridge Alliance, and others.
“It was like the government broke their hope.”
Maryam Sy, a Board member with the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, interviewed 255 people who were deported during the first Trump administration — most of them Black Muslim men, most deported to Africa after living in the U.S. for decades. “A lot of these people went through, I think, the hardest part of their life when they were deported. Because it was like a broken hope, like the government broke their hope. They came to America to seek asylum for a better life.”
Read more in “Broken Hope: Deportation and the Road Home.”
“I’d been in the United States for 32 years. I was doing everything for my family. It’s painful. I cry a lot, I think about my two kids. I lost everything.”
Ibrahima Keita was deported to Mali, leaving behind a wife and two kids, including one with sickle cell anemia. He had a work permit and took care of his family, until the day Trump started revoking those permits and arresting people like Ibrahima at their homes and ICE check-in meetings.
See Ibrahima’s testimony recorded for the National Immigrant Justice Center’s “Chance to Come Home” campaign. Donate to help his kids visit him in Canada, where he lives today. They haven’t seen each other in over six years.
“I have a daughter, and I miss her. She needs me in [her] life.”
Find these and other testimonies about deportation under the Trump administration in “Broken Hope: Deportation and the Road Home,” available as a free e-book download or for purchase on Bookshop.org. There are also written and audio summaries in English, French, and Fulani, as well as an Issue Brief from CLASP. Find multimedia content in our sensory summary.