I was 7 when red and blue lights cut across our living room walls in the middle of the night, and then my father was gone. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the early 1990s, had come to arrest my father and deport him for violating his student visa. His crime? Delivering newspapers before dawn so he could pay for university classes and provide for his family.
My parents had immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s, excited to build a life together. Our one-bedroom apartment became a landing spot for others, a place where newly arrived Nigerian immigrants — whether we knew them or not — could find refuge. My mom would tease that my dad “was very quick to share his salt and pepper shakers with strangers.”
One day, INS raided my parents’ home. They were looking for someone else, one of the people who once stayed with us. That person wasn’t there. But my father’s paycheck stub was sitting on the coffee table. The officer picked it up and asked why my father was working since he was here on a student visa. Pointing to my visibly pregnant mother, my dad explained that he was trying to provide for his growing family.
It didn’t matter to them.
What followed was a fractured family unit searching for stability. After my father was deported, my mother was left to raise my baby sister and me alone. She held things together with faith in God and sheer will, which often looked like praying over bills and working a double shift.
Meanwhile, across the ocean, my father raised us the only way he could: through letters. He sent chemistry pamphlets, physics exams and newspaper articles. It was my father’s way to say, “I am still here and believe in your future, even if I am not there to see it unfold.”
When my family was able to petition for my father to return, the U.S. government approved his application within months. It appeared they didn’t care about his old infraction, especially since many international students are encouraged to find work-study and on-campus opportunities to support their studies. A system that tore my family apart over a newspaper delivery route now saw no reason to keep us apart.
Photo Courtesy Of Julie M. Wenah
What happened in our living room wasn’t justice. It was a system that moved faster than its conscience. Each year, over half a million people are found to have violated visa terms. In 2025, thousands of student visas were revoked, many for infractions as minor as a speeding ticket. Nearly three out of four people in ICE detention have no criminal conviction. The system does not distinguish between a real threat and a father delivering newspapers. It simply moves, quickly.
And it is getting faster. Not fairer. Faster. Last year, the federal government expanded expedited removals nationwide and fast-tracked deportations without hearings before a judge. What was once limited to individuals near the border within 14 days of arrival now reaches anyone, anywhere in the country, and at any time of day or night.
The Constitution says it must be otherwise. The Fifth Amendment promises that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. In April 2025, the Supreme Court affirmed that “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in the context of removal proceedings.” All nine Justices agreed that notice must “be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”
While the case turned on a procedural element, requiring the legal challenge to be filed in the state where the detainees are held, the court’s stance on due process was unequivocal: The government cannot deport individuals without providing them a meaningful chance to be heard.
Photo Courtesy Of Julie M. Wenah
A month later, in a related case where both the substantive and procedural elements were met, the court ruled 7-2 that the government’s practice of providing roughly 24 hours’ notice before deportations “surely does not pass muster.” The April 2025 ruling recognized the right to due process. The May 2025 ruling confirmed the government was failing to provide it.
The law requires the government to slow down, yet the current administration is speeding up. And the cost of speed falls on families. Studies show that children separated from a parent have significantly higher rates of anxiety and depression. Thousands of American children have ended up in foster care because a parent was taken.
Seven months after my father’s return to the U.S., he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Four months later, he transitioned to the next world. Ten years later, my mother suddenly transitioned to the next world as well. My family’s story, like so many others, reminds me that the American dream and legal protections often seem to be promised to only a select few. We can do better. This means affording every person basic rights: a hearing before a judge, enough time to prepare and a real chance to be heard.
Behind every policy debate are real families, parents who “share their salt and pepper shakers” with strangers, children still waiting for justice to catch up to the promise of the American dream.
Julie M. Wenah is the founder and chair of the Digital Civil Rights Coalition and a Public Voices Fellow on Technology in the Public Interest with The OpEd Project.
Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on JS? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at [email protected].
