The Wisdom and Experience of Ohio Immigrant Leaders
In 2024, Ohio Immigrant Alliance delivered copies of our book Broken Hope: Deportation and the Road Home to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Selly Dia organized the book delivery, which featured family members of people who had been deported.
A video of Selly's speech garnered more than 350,000 views on TikTok. We published additional videos from our 2024 Capitol Hill delivery of Broken Hope on social media (see full playlist on YouTube). Selly’s father, Amadou Dia, operates a WhatsApp based radio program to provide news and a space for discussion to the Fulani diaspora around the world. Radio Bababe Looti has over 18,000 followers. Here, he is talking about his daughter’s video and the work at the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, in Fulani.
This year, we published a video about Mustapha Komeh’s experience in the Butler County Jail (IG, TikTok, YouTube) to promote our report “Ending Immigration Jail: How and Why.” Mustapha was deported to Sierra Leone during the first Trump administration, despite having lived in Ohio for decades and being responsible for young, U.S. citizen children. His picture graces the cover of Broken Hope.
As the video circulated online, Mustapha began to receive messages from people he knew in Columbus, including people he hadn’t talked to in years. He sent OIA a voice message expressing gratitude for providing this platform. He said that many people who called him cannot share the video publicly, because they are immigrants and don’t want to attract government scrutiny, but they are grateful that he used his voice to tell the world what immigration jail is really like. They are sharing it in private channels.
People who were deported are often discarded in the immigration policy debate. OIA’s #ReuniteUS advocacy program exists to change that. They have valuable experience to share, and deserve dignity and a future wherever they want to be. Permanent banishment from your home, family, and career is an extreme consequence for a paperwork problem.
The goals of #ReuniteUS might not be possible during the Trump administration. But we insist on changing U.S. immigration laws and policies to actually address human needs, social ties, family relationships, community benefits, and humanitarian protection, however long it takes.
