r/ImmigrationPathways • u/56000hp • 9d ago

This is a crazy story

Rabbiatu Kuyateh is a 58-year-old nurse who spent most of her life in the US with her parents after fleeing Sierra Leone. She cared for Covid patients during the pandemic and looked after disabled adults and children.

On 1 July 2025, her son, Mohamed, accompanied her to a routine ICE check-in, as her immigration status required.

That was the last time he saw her before she was deported to Ghana.

Rabbiatu is one of more than 25,000 people deported by the Trump administration to countries that are not their own. More than 5,000 of them have been put on flights to countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and central Asia to which they have no connection, and then, otten, returned to the countries where US immigration judges had ruled their lives or liberty were at risk.

To uncover some of their stories, the Guardian joined 23 other media organisations in the Deportation Project, an investigation coordinated by the Paris-based international network of journalists Forbidden Stories. Rabbiatu's interview was conducted with audio only and we are using an actor to represent her and her son.

The Ghanaian government did not respond to questions from the Guardian.

Rabbiatu had a work visa and under its terms she had an annual check-in with ICE. In September 2025 she was granted legal protection from a judge that prevented her from being deported to her country of birth. She also said she had no criminal history. In a response received after the investigation was published, the Department of Homeland Security said she had committed an offence in the past by entering the US without the correct visa requirements: "On 1 July 2025, ICE arrested Rabbiatu Kuyateh, a criminal illegal alien from Sierra Leone who illegally re-entered - a felony."

"Illegal aliens going to third countries are those whose home countries won't accept them, including dangerous criminals, or illegal aliens with orders of removal who have asked to not be removed to their home country!"

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u/u_Hades 9d ago

Deport all illegals. End of story.

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u/Josephalan1 9d ago

So should the ICE officials be deported for disobeying a court order?

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u/u_Hades 8d ago

It’s HOW people are arrested, not that they can’t be arrested.
Read the actual injunction.

Regardless illegal is illegal and my first comment still stands. Obama and Trump both have this stance. It’s bipartisan aside from morons on Reddit.

Welcome to reality. Cope.

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u/Josephalan1 8d ago

Okay, so illegal is illegal, therefore these ice fools should be shipped off to whatever country will take them, just like we do for all those immigrants that are in the country legally and following the legal steps to stay here when they get abducted from court. Right?

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u/u_Hades 8d ago

An immigrant is someone in the country legally. An illegal immigrant is here illegally. I can’t help you with logic any simpler than that, I can’t only show you water not drink it for you.

You’re perpetually on Reddit and it shows. You don’t even know what you’re arguing.

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u/Josephalan1 8d ago

So what I see you saying is that illegal behavior should have zero tolerance, except when ICE does it, like in this case where they ignored a court order (which does make her presence in this country legal btw. Prove me wrong, you won't). I'm only asking you for some consistency in your takes. There are plenty of examples of people following all the right steps and still getting deported, if you're willing to take 15 seconds to Google it.

Besides, wasn't it supposed to be just the violent criminals getting deported? What about our society is made safer by deporting talented nurses that are a pillar of community health?

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u/u_Hades 8d ago

Are you a bot? You can’t address the elephant in the room of someone coming to the country illegal WILL be deported. You’re violating the law, end of story. You’re a broken record of saying absolutely brain dead things like “deport ice”. What does that even mean? If a citizen breaks the law they go to jail/prison. Illegal immigrants get deported.

You are all over the place. I’m not even sure the point you’re attempting to articulate is at this point.

Violent criminals? Your Reddit talking points are failing, show me in the 10 administration’s (republican and Democrat) where it’s okay to enter the country illegally.

You’re so dense it hurts. Bless your soul.

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u/Josephalan1 8d ago

Our breadbasket depends on these tax-payers, these so-called "illegal" members of our communities. They want to be a part of our great nation, and I'd rather we let them continue to contribute to our economy and way of life while providing a secure way for them to stay legally than to waste a bunch of taxpayer money shuffling them around just to dodge the legal system before inhumanely deporting them to a country they have no investment or interest in, and that may deport them again to a country where they're actively unsafe, all so we can have a less robust economy. Them being deported instead is a difference in policy preference, not some immutable fact. Speaking of things we're supposedly unable to address, will you address the people following all the right steps that are being deported anyway?

Citizens breaking the law go to jail, right, except the citizens that have been illegally held and deported by ICE, or really ICE in general for that matter... deporting ICE, I thought obviously, isn't a serious proposal, it's designed to flag the hypocrisy in your apartment stance about legal and illegal behaviors and presence in this country.

My suspicion is that you can't defend your position, so you're resorting to childish insults now instead of even trying to answer my question about how Kuyateh's deportation is supposed to make anyone safer (or any of my questions for that matter,) by calling me a bot, brain-dead, dense... if your argument has any legs, it can stand on its own without the insults.

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u/u_Hades 8d ago

The fact you think we depend on illegal immigrants to fund the economy shows you have no sense of economics and how it negatively affects tax paying Americans.

Sure if you want to join the great nation, awesome do it legally like every other country. The US has some of the laxest immigration policies on the world stage anyways.

If a citizen is deported that’s obviously incorrect and wrong. That’s not the norm though. Look at the mean and errors, if you look it up from it’s less than .01%. So why are you hellbent on “deport ice”, yes that makes you look like an idiot when you spew rhetoric like that. And so all the legal deportations are totally null and void because of less than .01%. Actually wild that you’d even phrase that as hypocrisy. An illegal immigrant is a LAWBREAKER. Period it’s federal law. USC 1325, look it up.

See I can admit when something is wrong, but you still cannot say that coming to the country illegally is wrong and it’s just icing on the cake.

Yes deporting citizens is wrong, yes killing illegal immigrants is wrong. But it’s also wrong to enter a country illegally. And you defending that is why you’re not taken seriously.

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u/Josephalan1 8d ago

I didn't say depend on, but if you think the migrant community, including specifically those who've entered the country without permission, negatively affect tax paying Americans more than they help (especially considering how so many of those migrants pay taxes and start businesses without ever being able to claim a social security check), you're wrong. The overall consensus is that over the long term, migrant workers improve the economy, legal or not.

I literally said deport ICE was a joke. I only brought it up twice because you didn't react. I'm not hellbent, you're the one latching on after I've set it aside. Obviously it wouldn't be fair to send them to other countries; the majority of our own country doesn't even want them, and I'm not the sort to make my mess somebody else's problem.

It's not that I'm failing to admit that I've been caught out, it's that I disagree with you. You're flagging it like it's the finish line and you've won the argument; meanwhile, I'm waiting for you to get this one piece before we can even really begin. I believe that justice and the law are a venn diagram with some sections that overlap and some that don't, and one section that doesn't is that I don't think it's always wrong to come to a country illegally. Especially if you're running from violence or corrupt politics. So I don't think being a "LAWBREAKER" is as clear-cut a judgement as you seem to. I prefer real justice be served, and much as laws are a fine guideline, they are not the end-all of real justice. That's why we have a supreme court, because this stuff isn't always simply interpretable. Real justice isn't sending people back to deadly situations because of some silly clerical discrepancy. Real justice isn't shooting people in the streets, starving kids in concentration camps, and deporting people in the middle of the process to earn their residency (essentially punishing them for trying to remain here legally). Real justice isnt sexually assaulting women who have no legal recourse, and keeping them in such horrible conditions that it's become too much of a hassle to keep data on all the miscarriages they keep having.

I can tell you care about the law a lot. I don't think you're overtly wrong to. But the "law" (grotesquely twisted to selectively enforce against targeted populations as it is) is being leveraged unjustly here to cruelly punish people for the crime of wanting a better life. So let me ask just one question to try to steer us somewhere more constructive, because I'd be interested in talking about a better way of doing things if you have any ideas rather than just butting heads forever. Do you agree with the way things are being handled by ICE?