What happens to those ICE exported OUT of America?

The NY Times follows the trail to check on those whose lives where American, but have been uprooted and shipped away….

They have a hard time….

But those shown below did have criminal records….

Some now make their lives thru social media and are working on adjusting ….

They will seen as Americans for the rest of their lives , no matter were they are….

 

When Laymone Khambounleung was deported to Laos last August, his mother’s relatives met him at a holding facility. He did not know what they looked like.

It was one of many unknowns Mr. Khambounleung faced when he was removed from the United States, the only country he had really known, over convictions including burglary and threatening a family member.

Now, he is learning to navigate daily life in a country he left four decades ago as a baby. Mr. Khambounleung, who grew up in Louisiana, can speak Lao, but he cannot read or write in the language. He has befriended other men who, like him, left the country as children and assimilated in the United States.

And like deportees across Latin America, Africa and elsewhere in Asia, he is sharing glimpses of his life on social media, hoping to raise awareness about the challenges and opportunities people face when they are removed to unfamiliar home countries, or third countries to which they have no ties. For some, their online posts also provide an income.

In Mr. Khambounleung’s videos, his reactions to sights in Laos, narrated in his Louisiana accent, have attracted millions of views.

“It’s all new to me too,” Mr. Khambounleung, 41, said in an interview. “I wanted to let the whole world see the Lao culture also, experience it with me while I’m experiencing it.”

Between President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025 and the end of July, about 980,000 people were deported by the Department of Homeland Security, according to an analysis by Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. While most were intercepted at the border, a substantial number were immigrants residing in the country.

Through their videos on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, the lives of people who dwelled in the United States for a long time are told in new post-American chapters. Viewers on social media are offered a unique window into what comes after deportation upends a life.

‘You Don’t Really Fit Into Anywhere’

Being deported for some people means returning to a country of which they have little memory.

Mr. Khambounleung was 3 when his family, refugees from Laos, arrived in New Iberia, La., he said. After a burglary conviction, a judge in 2007 ordered his removal from the United States….

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“It’s a weird feeling, like you don’t really fit into anywhere,” he said. In the United States, he said, he had felt Salvadoran. But in El Salvador, people see him as Americanized.

Mr. Vasquez said he missed his family and his job as a medical assistant, and comforts like Chick-fil-A.

But, he said, he finds life in El Salvador less stressful. “As of right now, I feel good over here,” he said….

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Streaming Life in Mexico

Other deportees, like Raúl Hernández, use social media to process a situation they never imagined: being deported to a third country.

“I earned my deportation,” said Mr. Hernández, a Cuban citizen who was convicted of several drugs charges as well as burglary. He was deported to Mexico last August, in line with a Trump administration policy that has also sent people to African countries not their own, like Eswatini, South Sudan and Rwanda. “What I didn’t earn was getting sent to a third country without due process,” he added.

The D.H.S., in a statement, said he did receive due process. It defended its use of third-country removals as an “essential public safety tool,” arguing that there are safeguards in place.

Mr. Hernández, 29, was 7 when he was brought to the United States. His convictions led to revocation of his residency and a 2020 removal order. In May of 2025 he was detained by ICE….

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Now, he streams on TikTok most days and shares interviews with other deported Cubans.

The money he has made from social media, he said, including donations from sympathetic viewers, has helped him make ends meet.

His social media work has also given him purpose, he added.

“Honestly, it’s been the most fulfilling thing I’ve done in my entire life,” he said…..

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For all the disruptions, sharing their lives on social media is helping deportees maintain their ties to the United States, even if they now live in distant countries.

“I still consider that home over there,” Mr. Khambounleung said. “I’m forced to be here.”….

More…

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Lue Yang, who was convicted in a home invasion as a teenager, was facing deportation to Laos. With a plane on the tarmac, he wondered whether an appeal would be heard….

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A Human Rights Watch report found that many Cubans deported to Mexico by the Trump administration are living in an “indefinite legal limbo” and struggling to get by