Mogadishu, Somalia – Mukhtar Abdiwhab Ahmed sits in a plastic chair outside his house in Mogadishu. Nearby, children play, soldiers congregate, and rickshaws speed by under the scorching sun.
“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.
Mukhtar spent most of his life in the United States but has struggled to readapt to conservative Somali society since being deported in 2018 under the first Donald Trump presidency.
Now, newly inaugurated for a second time in office, the Trump administration has once again announced removal orders for migrants he says are in the US “illegally”. This includes more than 4,000 Somalis who, like Mukhtar, face deportation to the country of their birth.
But 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.
Meanwhile, Washington itself warns its own citizens about “crime, terrorism, civil unrest … kidnapping, [and] piracy” in the East African country, where attacks by the armed group al-Shabab are a common occurrence.
‘The wrong path’
Mukhtar and his family were among the first to flee Somalia after the collapse of the government in 1991. They left for neighbouring Kenya before Mukhtar and his older brother made it to the US as refugees.
The two settled in the south end of Seattle, Washington in 1995 – an area with high rates of poverty and youth violence, where 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.
Though he tried to get his life on track, in 2005, he was charged with armed robbery. It was the then 19-year-old’s first time going through the system as an adult; he was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison.
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.
“It felt like serving two sentences for committing one crime, and when I reached the immigration jail, I felt like an animal being taken to the slaughterhouse,” he says.
A few months in, ICE agents brought him a document to sign, saying he would be deported to Somalia. As part of its Criminal Alien Program, ICE works to identify and remove jailed migrants they believe “threaten the safety” of the US.
Mukhtar says he knew he wouldn’t be deported as Somalia was at war. It was 2007 and during that time, US-backed Ethiopian troops were in the country battling splinter groups that rose from the ashes following the ouster of the Islamic Courts Union, and the subsequent rise of its youth military wing, al-Shabab.
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.
“It was like history repeating itself once again,” he says.
He again thought ICE would not deport him to Somalia “because of the war and instability back home”. But 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.
“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 says.
‘Too dangerous for ICE agents’
In March 2018, Mukhtar was one of 120 migrants on a deportation flight from the US – 40 Somalis, 40 Kenyans and 40 Sudanese, he says. The Kenyans were released upon the plane’s arrival in Nairobi, while the Sudanese and Somalis were placed on separate flights headed for Khartoum and Mogadishu, respectively.
“We were still handcuffed when we switched planes in Nairobi but the ICE agents didn’t continue the journey with us from Nairobi to Mogadishu,” Mukhtar says.
Other deportees sent back in past years also report ICE using a third party to complete the removal process to Somalia.
In 2005, Somali immigrant Keyse Jama was flown from Minneapolis to Nairobi by ICE, only for a private security firm to escort him to Somalia – at a time when most of the country was controlled by strongmen.
Anwar Mohamed, 36, who was deported a month after Mukhtar, says he landed in Nairobi before he and the other Somali passengers were placed on another flight to Mogadishu.
“When we asked the ICE agents why they weren’t going to escort us to Mogadishu, they responded by saying Somalia is too dangerous,” Anwar tells Al Jazeera.
“If Somalia is too dangerous for ICE agents to go, then why did the [US] government send us here? ” he asks.
As of 2024, the US State Department has marked Somalia as a level 4 “Do Not Travel” country for US citizens, citing crime, terrorism and kidnapping, among other reasons. Al-Shabab and other groups opposed to the government continue to carry out armed attacks, including in places frequented by civilians.
While Somalia is deemed unsafe for US citizens, the Trump administration has marked 4,090 Somalis for deportation this year.
“The Trump administration is definitely endangering lives by deporting people to places like Somalia,” says Marc Prokosch, a senior lawyer at Prokosch Law, a firm in Minnesota that specialises in immigration cases.
“The balancing test for elected officials is whether it is worth it when considering our legal obligations [such the Convention Against Torture] and our moral and ethical obligations, compared to the obligations of protecting the safety and security of United States citizens,” he tells Al Jazeera, referring to the argument that migrants accused of violent offences should be deported for the safety of Americans.
Other immigration lawyers representing Somalis in the US have also voiced concerns, saying many of their clients are “terrified”, including exiled Somali journalists. One lawyer in Minnesota said in December that dozens of Somali asylum seekers have fled into neighbouring Canada over fears of an ICE clampdown.
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has cautioned that Temporary Protected Status – which protects foreign nationals from “unsafe” countries from deportation – may not be renewed for Somalis under the new Trump administration.
‘I saw the lifeless bodies of my friends’
Like Mukhtar, Anwar also fled Somalia during the civil war in the 1990s. His childhood memories of the country are bleak, he tells Al Jazeera, recounting one day that stands out in his mind.
“I was playing outside [in Mogadishu] with a couple friends, then we found an oval-shaped object on the ground. That’s when my mother called me in for Asr [afternoon Muslim] prayer,” Anwar recounts. “And then I heard a large explosion.
“Everyone from our neighbourhood came rushing outside, including me. I then saw the lifeless bodies of my three friends strewn on the dirt road … They died from the oval object they were playing with.
“Years later, when I matured, then did I only realise it was a grenade we were playing with and my mother’s call to prayer is what saved me,” he says.
Not long after that day, Anwar’s older brother was murdered by armed fighters. That was the last straw for his family, he says. His mother sent him to Kenya in 1997, before he and his older sister moved to the US as refugees.
But in the US, Anwar got involved in crime and violence, ultimately being jailed for 10 years for robbery in a state prison in Missouri.
Soon after he was released, he once again found himself in handcuffs – this time on a deportation flight to Somalia in April 2018.
Returning to Mogadishu after decades, he found himself in unfamiliar terrain.
“When I had the chains removed after arriving [in Mogadishu] is when it hit me: I was free but I really wasn’t free,” Anwar says, feeling like he was still imprisoned by his traumatic childhood memories.
Anwar started having flashbacks of past experiences in Somalia. To make matters worse, Mogadishu was still in a protracted state of conflict, and he felt death was a daily reality.
When he made his way to his father’s house to reconnect with relatives he hadn’t seen in more than 20 years, he saw his siblings shaking hands and laughing with armed soldiers sitting on top of a pick-up truck mounted with an anti-aircraft gun.
“As a child [in Somalia] during the civil war, these kinds of people [armed men] were feared,” he says, “but now many of them wear uniforms, have allegiances to the state and are tasked with security.
“The same thing [guns] my mother was shielding me from when she sent me away to the refugee camps in Kenya as a child have become a part of everyday life. ”
‘Every road I take can lead to death’
In March 2018, when Mukhtar’s plane landed in Mogadishu, he also found a society he couldn’t understand and a language he knew little of.
“It felt like starting life from scratch all over again,” he says.
Many Somali deportees from the US don’t have family members to return to because they’ve either been killed in the continuing three-decade-long conflict or fled the country and never returned, Mukhtar says.
“When you don’t have no one to come home to or a place to go, it leaves many deportees vulnerable and might force some to resort to crime as a means of survival. ”
Upon returning to the city, Mukhtar saw tall apartment buildings, condominiums and paved roads in Mogadishu. It was different from the bullet-riddled buildings and bombed-out infrastructure he saw on television, he thought. But the realities of the war were around him in other ways, as he would soon find out.
“In Mogadishu, explosions are reality and can happen any moment … You can be walking down the street and an explosion can take your life. In this city, there aren’t warnings before bombings, only screams and cries that come after,” he says.
At first, Mukhtar settled in an old family home in the Waberi district – an upscale area home to government employees, security officials, diaspora returnees and locals working for international NGOs. But even areas that are deemed safe are not, he says.
One sweltering day, Mukhtar looked out of his window as a group of men played dominos, labourers trekked through a construction site, and young women sold tea outside.
“I was thinking of walking down the street to get cigarettes but I felt kind of lazy and decided to stay home,” Mukhtar says, “[then] I heard a very loud explosion. ”
He later learned that the blast took place on the same road he always walked down.
“I could have died if I didn’t choose to stay home that day. I was lucky but you never know when you’ll meet the same fate as those caught up in that explosion,” he says.
“Every road I take can lead to death, and with every step, you think you’re going to die. ”
‘No opportunities’
Added to the precarious security situation in Somalia is a lack of opportunities, deportees say.
Youth make up an estimated 70 percent of Somalia’s population, yet the country has a nearly 40 percent youth unemployment rate.
“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. ”
Some deportees who speak both English and Somali have found work as interpreters, but most do not as they have lost their mother tongue in the years abroad.
Meanwhile, several have joined the police force or national army upon returning to Somalia.
“Many of these guys being deported from the US are coming to Somalia after serving 10 or 15-year prison terms,” Mukhtar says.
When they join the police or army, “they get $200 a month as a salary”.
Mukhtar has, at times, contemplated joining the police or the army, but 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.
Aside from threats to their physical safety, the cultural chasm between deportees and their countrymen also weighs on them.
Mukhtar says stigma from members of the community is something he still faces, despite having been back for several years.
“The tattoos I got at a young age also came back to haunt me,” he adds, saying that tattooing is viewed as alien or taboo by many in the deeply conservative Somali Muslim society, and that he’s even been verbally abused at a mosque when he pulled up his sleeves to perform ablution before prayers.
‘The card I’ve been dealt’
Anwar has also faced stigma.
“When I first came here, I stuck out,” he says, also mentioning his tattoos, which he has started to cover up.
“Everything from the way I walked to the way I spoke Somali. Everyone knew I wasn’t a local and when they found out I was deported from the US, they looked at me as if I was the guy who dropped the ball at the finish line. ”
Being away in the US and far from Somali customs, culture and language all contributed to difficulties readjusting to life in Somalia.
“I didn’t adapt to this environment by choice. It was forced upon me, the day I arrived in chains,” he says.
He has even found himself stopped by intelligence officials and cross-questioned about where he’s from and what he’s doing here, he says.
“I asked myself how long is this going to go on,” he laments.
Still, he is determined to adjust to his new life.
“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.
