This story made me feel good all over.
'This is Africa, deal with it': The lives of the migrants deported from the US to the Central African Republic
Still unable to believe everything he’s experiencing, Brayan Omar Sánchez leans out from the balcony of his room. He’s living at Maison Confort, an apartment complex in Lakouanga, a bustling, central neighborhood of Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic.
Sánchez pauses to observe the place in awe. Everything is completely foreign to him; it’s as if he’s been transported to the ends of the Earth. He sees a woman walking with a basket on her head; he sees the rooftops of low houses with brick walls; he sees unpaved streets, with their reddish hue. The day he complained about the lack of water for bathing, a guard told him, “This is Africa, deal with it.”
The Central African Republic is slightly smaller than Texas, the state where U.S. authorities put him on a plane, handcuffed and shackled, on July 31. He thought it was a joke the first time an officer told him he was on the list for a deportation flight to Africa. “That seemed impossible to me,” he says.
He knew little about the African continent: he imagined it as a place far removed from the rest of the world (or at least from Olancho, the region where he was born in Honduras). If they had sent him to Ethiopia, Botswana, or Cameroon, it would have been all the same to him, because in his mind, Africa was “a very, very, very faraway place, with deserts, vicious animals, nasty diseases and languages I don’t speak.” It was the last place he thought he would end up when, on May 13, 2026, he left his home in the Miami neighborhood of Allapattah, early in the morning, only to be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
Since crossing the U.S.-Mexico border a decade ago, Sánchez, 31, had worked as a gardener and truck driver. He also operated a small pressure-washing business. He was always undocumented. Now, all of that seems to belong to a past life: he thinks about it as he paces back and forth in the Maison Confort apartment that he shares with another man. He’s trying to find an explanation for why he ended up in Bangui, as well as a way to get out.
More at the link:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/othe...1&cvid=6a81a16b7dec4896939002e2e9de36e8&ei=59