Samuel Anthony He turned his phone camera to show the view from his family home in Sierra Leone. He steps out onto a veranda overlooking a carpet of lush green trees dotted with houses that merge with the sea in the distance.
“This is how most people in Sierra Leone live.” Anthony tells me, pointing near a single “fan body” structure made of zinc. “In America, we call it a camper home.”
The scenery we both agree is breathtaking. “But it doesn’t help financially,” he says.
When his mother passed away in 2021, Samuel Anthony was unable to attend the funeral.
Anthony may have been born in West Africa, but all he knows is America. Now 52, he left Sierra Leone with his older sister in 1978 at the age of six to join his parents who had crossed the Atlantic in search of a better education. that He grew up around 14th Street, then the red light district, in Washington DC in the 1980s. He was a completely different world from the person he is now, 40 years later.
During Trump’s first administration in 2019, Anthony was one of approximately 360,000 immigrants deported that year. He has decades of drug convictions. Five years later, the president-elect will return to the White House pledging to strengthen mass deportations of millions of people.
Trump: “When people kill and murder” NBC News Among his mass deportation plans: “The drug lords destroyed the country and now they are going back to it because they are not here to stay.”
Trump touts the deportation plan as necessary to root out violent criminals. But the people targeted by the Trump administration are likely to be people like Anthony, long-term residents with some kind of criminal record and the baggage of an imperfect American life. (In fact, according to recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data, the most common crimes monitored by ICE are transportation-related.)
“I didn’t come to America to be a drug dealer or a bad person,” he says. “Just not understanding life, the elements of things, and myself sends me into a negative spiral. “My life spiraled out of control and I could never get back on track.”
With Trump’s inauguration just days away, Anthony is worried he may never get a chance to return. “I didn’t want to be here.” Anthony said. “I never dreamed that this would be my final resting place.”
Anthony’s childhood The few years I spent as a new immigrant in Washington DC were not easy. In his heart he was an American. The world told him otherwise. “It wasn’t what we call Kumbaya,” says Anthony. “It was a time when everyone held hands and sang. “It was a very hostile time in America, just as we are experiencing immigration issues now.”
He remembers being bullied at school and having trouble fitting in or making friends. “I wanted to be part of American society,” he recalls. He felt comfortable but refused to accept it. “All I know are American cities,” he says. “All I know is Washington DC.”
When Anthony was about seven years old, he was sexually assaulted by a doctor. It was only later that he realized how what had happened affected him. “I have a hard time trusting people,” he said.
At the height of the drug era in the nation’s capital, Anthony became involved with drugs. He began carrying weight loss pills for others and later began selling crack cocaine and using PCP. His addiction caused him to drop out of college.
“I was falling and falling in the hole and it felt like I never really got my footing.”
Anthony had several run-ins with police. In 1991, he was severely beaten after being involved in a fight and was taken to hospital, where police searched him and found drugs. Five years later, Anthony was arrested and pleaded guilty to drug offenses. He was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison. He was released early 15 years after Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act to address racial discrimination.
Upon his release, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Anthony and transported him to a detention center. He didn’t know if his drug conviction would affect his immigration status, but he lost his green card from 1989 and was put in deportation proceedings.
The U.S. government was unable to deport him because it was unable to obtain his travel documents from Sierra Leone. Instead, ICE determined that Anthony did not pose a threat or flight risk and released him in 2012 under a supervision order that required him to report regularly to the agency.
Anthony began rebuilding his life. He got his commercial driver’s license and started working for a trucking company, while also driving for Uber and Lyft. He bought a house and reconnected with his family, including his daughter Samantha, whom he missed as a child while in prison. He also started a mentoring program to help formerly incarcerated people.
After President Trump took office in 2017, Director Anthony’s supervision orders became more stringent. He was made to wear an ankle bracelet and had more regular check-ins at immigration. One day in July 2019, Anthony went to what he thought was another routine ICE appointment. But Anthony said the agents wouldn’t let him go, locked him in a conference room, threw him on a table and arrested him. He was blind.
Sarah Gilman, co-founder of the Rapid Defense Network, a legal nonprofit focused on detention and deportation defense that joined forces with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Group, argued in court that Anthony’s deportation was unlawful. They tried to stop Anthony’s deportation in court, but failed. Another reason is that the U visa case was pending. This is a special protection for undocumented crime victims who cooperate with law enforcement. (The Trump administration withdrew guidance encouraging ICE not to deport U visa applicants.)
“Historically, people with criminal records, like Samuel, have often been unusually double-punished, even though they completed their sentences and received reinstatement,” says Gilman. “What happened in the Trump 1.0 era is that everyone became a bad immigrant,” she added.
ICE kept Anthony. He was detained until December 2019. They then put him on a plane to Morocco and from there to Sierra Leone. He landed in the middle of the night and all he could see was darkness. Anthony remembers wishing he could go into the sea and never return.
“This is what has happened for the last 22 years of my life,” he says. “I was falling and falling in the hole and it felt like I never really got my footing.”
In Sierra Leone, Anthony struggles with depression and health problems, including malaria, gastrointestinal problems and weight loss. Their status as outcasts, unable to speak the local dialect, makes it difficult for them to find work and makes them victims of extortion. When his mother passed away in 2021, he was unable to attend the funeral.
“It was so heartbreaking for my mother that I think it contributed to her depression and ultimately her death,” says Anthony’s older sister, Samilia.
She hopes her brother’s story will help people reconsider how they think about our immigration system. “That’s not right,” Samilia said. Even if you committed a crime, you paid the price. “If America doesn’t want people like that, they should just send them directly home instead of sending them to prison for 15 years with nothing.”
Anthony’s attorneys have asked ICE to join a motion to reopen and dismiss his deportation case so he can regain his lawful permanent resident status. Former Attorney General Eric Holder wrote in an October letter supporting Anthony’s petition to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Acting ICE Director that he “should not be held hostage to the unpredictable changes of the federal government.” . “In immigration policy.”
Anthony is also applying for humanitarian parole to return to the United States while the Biden administration is in office, but time is against him.
“If Samuel doesn’t come home before Trump takes office, he won’t come home for another four years,” Gilman said. And I don’t know if Samuel will survive in Sierra Leone.”
Anthony has no idea where to start, nearly 4,500 miles away from the only place he has ever called home. “I don’t feel at peace here,” he says. “I feel confused. I see confusion. I see the pain. I see myself broken. “It’s not easy.”
