I have a new piece out in The Baffler, which follows one young man as he is deported from Nebraska to South Sudan, a country in which he had never set foot.
In 2015, I started writing 'expert' reports for South Sudanese immigrants facing deportation from the USA. This piece is about the violence of the immigration courts, and the struggle of reconstructing a life from the fragments contained in court documents.
Under Trump, my caseload surged. All my clients had a similar story: young men born in Khartoum or Gambella, who had come to America as children, and who were now threatened with deportation from their home to a country in which they had never set foot.
My story focuses on Duol Tut Jock, one of the smartest guys I know. At the end of a long deportation flight, at the airport in Juba, South Sudan's capital, he was ready to return 'home'. He was met with a mirror image of the racist bureaucracy he had just left in America.
The piece chronicles Jock's struggles to survive in South Sudan, and the odd resonances of life in America that he finds on the hardscrabble streets of Juba. I spent two years reporting this story, and was deeply privileged to earn Jock's friendship, and tell this story.