Published: February 3, 2025
(Diary of an American deportee)
The fluorescent lights of the deportation center hummed, a stark counterpoint to the tumultuous thoughts swirling in Ifeanyi’s mind. He’d been in the States for seven years, his life woven into the fabric of Brooklyn. He’d worked tirelessly as a delivery driver, sending a portion of his meager earnings back to his mother in Nigeria. He’d made friends, learned slang, even developed a taste for greasy pizza. Now, it was all unraveling.
Sending him back to Africa wasn’t what Ifeanyi hated. He wasn’t naive. He knew the precarious nature of his undocumented status, the specter of deportation always lurking in the shadows. What gnawed at him, what burned like acid in his gut, was the way President Donald Trump had ordered it to happen.
The news had been playing on repeat in the center’s common room – clips of Trump railing against “illegals,” his face contorted in a familiar scowl. He’d seen the tweets, the dehumanizing rhetoric, the casual cruelty with which he’d spoken of people like Ifeanyi. Trump hadn’t just ordered his deportation; he’d made him a symbol, a pawn in his political game.
The manner of it all felt personal, a deliberate stripping away of his dignity. They hadn’t even given him a chance to say goodbye to his friends, no opportunity to pack his life into a suitcase. One minute he was at a red light, waiting for the signal to change, the next he was being fingerprinted, his future reduced to a barcode.
He wasn’t a criminal. He’d worked hard, paid taxes, contributed to the very society that was now discarding him like trash. He’d even volunteered at a local food bank, helping to feed those less fortunate. But none of that mattered. Under the current administration, he was just a statistic, another nameless face being shipped back to a place he barely remembered.
Sitting on the hard plastic chair, he saw a young woman named Maria, huddled in a corner, her eyes red and swollen. He knew they were both experiencing the same crushing weight of injustice, the same chilling indifference. They were numbers, not people.
They boarded the plane in the dead of night, shackled and silent. As the plane ascended, Ifeanyi looked out the window. The sprawling lights of New York City, his home for seven years, twinkled below like fallen stars. A lump formed in his throat. He wasn’t just leaving a place; he was leaving a part of himself.
The flight was long and arduous, punctuated by the fear of the unknown. He landed in Lagos, a city that felt alien yet strangely familiar. The heat was suffocating, the chaos disorienting. He felt lost, adrift in a sea of faces he didn’t recognize.
He found a cheap room in a rundown guesthouse and called his mother. Her voice, though weary, held a familiar warmth that soothed the rawness of his heart. She’d been worried sick, of course, not having heard from him in days.
Slowly, tentatively, Ifeanyi began to reconstruct his life. He found work as a motorcycle taxi driver, weaving through the frenzied Lagos traffic. It wasn’t glamorous, but it paid the bills, and he could send a small amount back to his mother.
He never forgot the sting of Trump’s rhetoric, the brutal manner in which he had been uprooted. He didn’t hate being sent back to Africa, not inherently. This was his homeland, his heritage. But he hated the way it had been done, the casual disregard for his humanity, the feeling of being treated as less than.
The experience had hardened him, but also given him a different kind of strength. He learned that resilience wasn’t just about surviving; it was about finding a way to thrive, even in the face of injustice. He decided he wouldn’t let Trump’s actions define him. He was still Ifeanyi, the boy who loved pizza and dreamed of a better life. And somewhere, he knew, he would find it, even on the dusty streets of Lagos. He wouldn’t just exist, he would live, and he would do so with a quiet dignity that no president, no policy, could ever take away.
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