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Do you want to know what the other side of deportation looks like? Do you want to know what it feels like to have a family member taken by ice? Can you imagine what it feels like not knowing where your family member is? Can you imagine waking up and seeing that your family member has been trafficked again out of state lines without any communication to the lawyer that you're paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars to? Can you imagine that? I don't have to imagine it. On October 23rd, 2025, my uncle, a Somali man was kidnapped and trafficked by ICE in Maine while trying to renew his worker's permit. He is a person with no criminal past. He has no criminal history. He's a working class man, an immigrant from Somalia who has lived in the United States for over 20 years. He's paid taxes for every year that he's been here. 


He's contributed to his local economy every year that he's been here, and he was still taken by ICE in Maine, not a city, a state that nobody is even talking about in the discussions about ice raids. Nobody's even talking about Maine. They're taking people from Maine, they're taking Somali people from Maine, they're taking black people from Maine, they're taking African immigrants from Maine, like my uncle. After they took him, we found out that he was trafficked into Boston. He was placed at Plymouth Correctional Facility, which is a prison in Boston, Massachusetts. We were able to retain a lawyer in Massachusetts and he was able to speak to him. So we were able to have a direct line of contact with our uncle for the seven weeks that he was in detainment at that facility for those seven weeks. 


I don't know how to put into words what it feels like to know somebody you love is in a horrible condition, but we didn't give up. Obviously, he has a huge family behind him and he had a lawyer behind him, and our lawyer tried multiple times every day to get in contact with ice. My uncle was trying to comply with them. He was trying to get a bond so that he can go get his stuff arranged and leave willingly, and they still did not talk to our lawyer once. They didn't communicate with us. My uncle is a middle-aged man, so he has a few health issues that were not treated while he was in ice custody, and he was also given food that was horribly un nutritious and cold and nothing that anybody could eat. He was treated so horribly 


In the ICE facility. He told us that there is no privacy in the bathrooms, so obviously there's a level of dignity that they're taking away from these people, especially Muslim people who are in there. But in general, everybody, nobody deserves to not have privacy when they use the bathroom. He told us that there are no beds. The lights stayed on all 24 7. He told us after six months, some people who have been in there for six months, you can get some sort of electronic device provided by ice. He was not in there for that long, but he told us that there were many people in there who've been in these facilities for over two years. Somewhere in the middle of December, they began trafficking him again after seven weeks of no communication from ICE to our lawyer, even though our lawyer was based in Boston. So he went there physically and they never spoke to him. We, we, our family, his matrilineal family, so he's my uncle through my mother, their brother and sister. We all live in the state of North Carolina. He lives in Maine. So we decided to get in contact with our state representatives. We signed some release forms, consent release forms for them to inquire ice about our uncle. They didn't do anything. 


North Carolina senators, you didn't do anything. You didn't help us. You didn't respond. You didn't ask ice about my uncle. You didn't do anything. 


And so in the middle of December, on around December 14th, he was trafficked again to the south. This happened after his commissary changed to say, ice air. If you have a family member in ice custody, if their commissary says ice air, this means that they're going to traffic them across state lines. We didn't know where, so we just had to wait for him to call us back. We got a call from this kind woman whose husband has been in ice detention for over two years, who made friends with my uncle, and he called us on his behalf to tell us that he was trafficked. So these are the ways that people are finding about the location of their loved ones, not through any type of system, location system that ICE should have already set up. We are finding out through secondhand accounts, through inmates, not inmates, through immigrants who are trying to help friends that they're making in these horrible conditions. 


My uncle, obviously was frightened after being trafficked to another facility in the south. I believe the first one was in Mississippi. Within around 48 hours, he was moved again to two more facilities in Texas. At this point, he was sort of aware that he was bound for deportation despite every attempt that we made to try and get any sort of communication with ICE to deal with this in a more humane way. And then on December eight, 16th, 17 18th, these dates, I cannot give you firm dates because they are trafficking these people and they're not telling us when they're leaving. They do things before they tell us. So around these dates, he was deported back home to Somalia and on the flight he told us there was a Nigerian man who was extremely panicked, and he said that Ice and border patrol injected him with something to sedate him. 


He told us that ice beat him severely, and he has suffered broken bones because of it. This is not a unique experience in these ice facilities. We're dealing with physical assaults in there. You're dealing with sexual assaults, you're dealing with torture, you're dealing with withholding food, you're dealing with the type of everything that is in your fucking mind, you're dealing with. So the fact that people are just now waking up because a white woman was shot in Minnesota, I'm a Somali woman. ICE has directly impacted my family. Ice has directly impacted the city that I have been born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. In fact, they came down here and began terrorizing this city, much like they terrorized Chicago. Exactly like they terrorized Chicago actually, and exactly like they're terrorizing Minnesota right now. They came to my city and harassed immigrants in my side of Charlotte. And you know what I did? I still went to protests. I still joined ice verifier trainings. I just like Renee was also doing, watching community watch around locations in my city where immigrants are. It's not that fucking hard. So to see idiots talk about what can we do, we can't do anything. The playbook is right in front of you. Do something, get the fuck up. It's too late for so many people. Get up, get up.