At a time when ICE is abducting our family members and friends from their homes and workplaces, let’s take a moment to think ahead a few years. What does life after deportation look like? The Ohio Immigrant Alliance has been working with people who were deported since 2011, helping them raise their own visibility and voices in the U.S. immigration debate. We even wrote a book about it with Suma Setty at the Center for Law and Social Policy.
Recently, journalist Marty Schladen interviewed two of our #ReuniteUS community members, Oumar Diallo and Saidu Sow, for Ohio Capital Journal.
Oumar Diallo – Beloved Uncle and Mauritanian Elder from Columbus
Through fits of coughing and assistance from his friend and interpreter, OHIA’s Demba Ndiath, Oumar described why he left Mauritania after the genocide. “It was pretty bad for us Black people. We were targeted. They said we were part of a militia group (because they protested forced-removals of Black people to Senegal, a form of ethnic cleansing.) They killed one of my brothers and they were looking for me.”
He escaped to Senegal in 1989. “Still feeling too close to Mauritania to be safe, Diallo and a friend got B2 business visas as food merchants and fled to New York,” wrote Schladen.
“The reason why I came here is that we would be safe, we would be protected,” Oumar said. He applied for asylum and was denied. Ohio Immigrant Alliance has researched why some Black Mauritanian refugees lost their cases in immigration court, and it has everything to do with the court’s structure and biases, and nothing to do with the merits of their cases. Still, Oumar was allowed to remain in the U.S. and work legally for decades, until the first Trump administration came into power. An older man by that time, Oumar was one of hundreds of people who survived a genocide, only to be detained in Ohio county jails after years of living in safety.
Following the indignities of “life” in Ohio county jails, and being deported in shackles, Oumar was immediately arrested in Mauritania — just has he had feared. “We were sleeping on the floor, with pee and defecation. I got sick there and I haven’t recovered,” he said. Living in relative safety in Senegal now, said Oumar, “I’m forced to beg to survive. I can’t afford medication. In Columbus, I was working and providing for myself. Now I can’t do any of those things.”
Wrote Schladen, “In other words, U.S. taxpayers spent tens of thousands to remove a peaceful, taxpaying worker and send him to a place that destroyed his health.”
When they deported him, the Columbus community lost a beloved elder, uncle, and friend. Said OHIA’s Demba Ndiath, who considers Oumar an uncle and father figure, “my own family experienced the pain of deportation during the first Trump administration, when my uncle was torn from us. I know what it’s like to watch our elders, teachers, and community leaders being taken away from our mosques and our families.”
Saidu Sow – Father, Husband, and Human Rights Leader from Cincinnati
Saidu Sow is another man who survived the Mauritanian genocide, built a life in the United States, and fought to keep it from crashing down during the first Trump administration. Schladen explained:
[Saidu’s] experience is like those of so many others who come to the United States seeking a better life. He worked making BMW and Mercedes parts in Florence, Ky. He worked at Schwan’s Foods preparing meals for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. He worked as a forklift driver and as picker in a warehouse. He drove a cab.Sow learned the hard way that the rules governing U.S. immigration aren’t nearly so simple as many Americans might think.
He married a woman who was born and raised in Kentucky and they had a daughter, Maliyah. Being married to a citizen meant that he needed to change his requested immigration status from asylum seeker to that of lawful permanent resident, or green card holder.
But then Sow got caught in the administrative labyrinth that the American immigration system is.
Ours is a system where you can simultaneously be eligible for a green card and eligible for deportation. In many cases, the government chooses the deportation route, instead of working with immigrants to help them access legal status available to them under the law. You can’t “make it make sense,” because it doesn’t. That’s why we need a fair immigration process.
Said Saidu, “There was a time when I thought I was from Ohio. It’s where my daughter was born. Then people started telling me ‘Go back home.’” His detention and deportation cost the U.S. taxpayer $220,000. But the cost to Saidu, his family, and their futures is immeasurable. “I feel like I was betrayed. All of the taxes I paid, 20 years of hard work, getting nothing back. Everything I worked for in the United States is gone…. You lose your car, your home, everything you have. You’ll never have a chance to get it back. It’s gone. The minute they put the cuffs on you, it’s gone.”
Still, Saidu has a lot to be proud of. During the years he spent in immigration jail, fighting his case in civil court, he bravely spoke out against racism, violence, medical neglect, and other abuses inside Ohio county jails. He and other incarcerated men — most of whom were Black and Muslim immigrants — were told they had no power and proved their jailers wrong. Their efforts led to the cancellation of two ICE contracts in Ohio, and a 76% reduction of ICE detention capacity in the state.
After NPR exposed similar abuses in other immigration jails, Saidu said, “Finally, at least one government body has found that everything we were saying was true. They’re still missing some things; this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is no fixing this system. ICE detention should not exist.”
Read OHIA’s tribute to Saidu Sow following his deportation here. Learn more about OHIA’s efforts to change deportation policy, so that people who were separated can finally come home, here.
As OHIA’s Executive Director Lynn Tramonte told Ohio Capital Journal:
I’ve had a bunch of conversations with people who aren’t immigration experts. They tell me how they think the system works and ask, ‘Why don’t people just do it that way?’ It got me thinking, why don’t we just make the system work the way people think it does? They think people can get a green card because of their spouse. They think that if you have a job here and you’re needed, you can get a work permit. They think that if you’re an international student, you can get a job after you graduate. They don’t know that all those pieces are broken.
The pieces aren’t working now, but we can create a fair system based on common sense, humanity, and decency. Read “A New Paradigm for Humane and Effective Immigration Enforcement” by Peter L. Markowitz for ideas on how to do just that. Learn more about the Ohio Immigrant Alliance’s campaign to change deportation policy, so more people can come home, at reunite.us.