Trump's deportation plan may put Somali lives at risk back home, warns former US deportees

Somalia nationals previously deported by the US warn that President Trump’s plan to expel more Somali migrants may endanger lives.

Mukhtar Abdiwhab Ahmed is yet to settle into his new life in Mogadishu.

In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, the young man who left Somalia after the collapse of the government in 1991 paints a picture of the struggles that US deportees face in their attempts to adjust to life in the country of their birth.

“If I knew I would end up here (in Somalia) I would have never gotten these tattoos,” the 39-year-old tells Al Jazeera, saying he has taken

to mostly wearing long sleeves to avoid the negative comments and “dirty looks” he gets from people in the city.

From struggling to adjust to his native culture, to having to hide his tattoos, Mukhtar who has spent all his adult life in the US after

leaving Somalia as a child, confessed that he still struggles to adjust to the conservative Somali culture despite having been deported back in 2018 under President Donald Trump’s first presidency.

As threats for more deportation continue with Trump’s second presidency, Mukhtar paints a picture of how life is after returning home

and the lurking danger that may befall some.

According to Al Jazeera, lawyers, activists and Somalis who were deported from the US in previous years say the plan may put lives at risk as insecurity and instability still plague Somalia, readapting to a country many left as children is difficult, and work opportunities are scarce.

When Mukhtar and his family left Somalia in 1991, they first entered Kenya before he and his older brother made it to the US as refugees.

In 1995, the two brothers resettled in the south end of Seattle, Washington, an area with high rates of poverty and youth violence.

It is here that Mukhtar says he fell into crime, drugs and temptation.

“At 16, I started getting into trouble,” he says. He skipped school, dabbled in crime, and was arrested and charged with a felony after

stealing and crashing a relative’s car.

In 2005, at the age of 19, he was charged with armed robbery and violence, found guilty and sentenced to two years of life imprisonment.

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“The day his sentence ended, agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) visited him in prison, and instead of releasing him, transferred Mukhtar to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington – one of the largest immigration detention centres in the US,” Al Jazeera notes.

It was while serving a jail term at the immigration jail that ICE agents brought him documents to sign indicating that he would be deported back home.

“Tired of being in prison, Mukhtar decided to sign the document. But after he was released by ICE, he says he “kept going down the wrong

path”. When he was arrested for burglary in 2015, he expected to be released after completing his one-year sentence, but ICE showed up again and sent him back to Northwest Detention Center for 11 months.”

All this while, he assumed ICE would not deport him to Somalia because of the war and instability that was taking place.

However, in December 2017, he was among 92 Somalis put on a deportation flight manned by ICE agents that prompted an international outcry after the plane did not make it to its destination for logistical reasons and it emerged that the deportees were abused en route.

“We were abused on the deportation flight,” he says. “I recall there were about 20 guards, they roughed up a lot of us, including one

guy who was tased. They really beat us and, mind you, the whole time we were in handcuffs and shackled by our waist and feet for like 40

hours.”

Upon returning to the US, they were taken to an immigration detention centre and most of the Somalis on his flight filed motions to reopen their immigration cases to fight deportation.

However, others like Mukhtar accepted deportation to Somalia – rather than risk a lengthy court process and further jail time.

He was deported in March 2018 alongside 119 others including 40 Somalis, 40 Kenyans and 40 Sudanese.

“If I look at all the times I’ve been incarcerated my entire life, it adds up to eight years, nearly a decade, and I couldn’t bear to

stay behind bars any longer,” he told Al Jazeera.

Today, aged 39 Mukhtar is yet to get himself a formal job.

“There are no opportunities here and we don’t have a stable country,” says Mukhtar, who is unemployed. “If you’re a deportee,

it’s much worse.”

Like many deportees who have since joined the security agencies, Mukhtar confessed to Al Jazeera that at times, he contemplated joining the police or the army, but later decided against it.

“When you’re wearing a uniform and carrying a gun, you don’t know who or when someone is going to take your life,” he says.

“I changed my ways, got married and [now] drive a rickshaw to get by. I try my best, but the hostility from some members of my community…makes living in an already hostile environment even more hostile,” he says.

“But I don’t blame them for their ignorance,” Anwar adds. “This is the card I’ve been dealt and I have to make the best of it.”

The Trump administration has marked over 4,000 Somalis for deportation as part of the nearly two million “illegal immigrants” that have

been identified for deportation from the US. The list includes citizens from various African countries, with Somalia having the highest number of citizens at 4,090, followed closely by Nigeria with 3,690.

Mexico tops the overall list with the highest number of citizens, at 252,044, slated for deportation while Kenya stands at position 12 in the

African category with 1,282 marked for deportation.