Nelson Ardila, kitchen assistant deported by Trump: ‘I had never felt so vulnerable as when they put me in handcuffs’

Nelson Ardila was praying with other migrants in his room at the Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas when he learned that his dream of migrating to the United States had come to an end. A security guard interrupted the evening prayers on January 28 to announce that he and the pastor, who was also detained, were leaving at 8 p.m.

Ardila tried to find out what had happened to the interview he had been promised to assess his case — and why his nephew was being allowed to stay — but he received no answers. “I can’t give you any information,” was all he heard.

Minutes later, he says, the ordeal began. They handcuffed him and chained him at the waist, as if he were a criminal. “I have never felt so sad and vulnerable,” says the 37-year-old Colombian, who worked as a kitchen assistant at a restaurant in Bucaramanga.

Ardila landed at Bogotá’s airport on Wednesday, January 29, with his wrists raw from the shackles. By then, the diplomatic crisis between the United States and Colombia — sparked by Gustavo Petro’s government refusal to accept two flights carrying handcuffed migrants on January 26 — had been resolved. In response, Bogotá had arranged three flights to bring back the deportees under dignified conditions.

However, Ardila’s flight was managed by U.S. authorities — the first since the crisis. He recalls that officers even beat those who attempted to remove their restraints.

Once in Bogotá, he stepped out of immigration and found himself completely alone. There were no humanitarian workers to help him travel to his city, nine hours away by road. He was saved by Diana, a former coworker who sent him 100,000 pesos ($24) for a bus.

The journey to the United States began on August 13, when Ardila’s nephew suggested they travel together with the support of a relative already living in Chicago. For Ardila, it was a chance to provide greater financial support to his mother and his older brother, who has terminal cancer.

“My father died on March 27, 2021, due to the pandemic. I promised him that I would not leave them helpless,” says Ardila. Although his mother did not complain about their hardships, he noticed that she wanted a home in better conditions — there hadn’t been money to repair the roof, walls, or bathrooms for some time."

His daily wage of 60,000 pesos (about $14) as a kitchen assistant barely covered the essentials. In contrast, the United States offered the possibility of earning between $7 and $17 an hour.

The preparations took three weeks. Ardila’s nephew secured a loan of 10 million pesos (about $2,400) and sold his motorcycle for another five million (about $1,200). Meanwhile, Ardila quit his job of 15 years, and received a severance payout of two million pesos (about $480).

He remembers that both his boss and Diana urged him not to leave. “They told me things might not be great for me here, but when you’re so excited, you don’t stop to weigh the pros and cons,” he says.

He broke up with his boyfriend of four years, who was also opposed to the plan. “He told me that he had nothing to do in the United States, that he was going to build his life in Colombia, that he was going to enjoy himself and that he was not going to put it upon himself to start missing me,” says Ardila.

Ardila and his nephew flew to Mexico City on December 2, disguising their journey as tourism with visits to the Teotihuacan pyramids and the Xochimilco canals to avoid raising suspicion at immigration. Afterward, they scheduled appointments to apply for humanitarian permits that would allow them to enter the United States legally.

While waiting, they worked for several months on the outskirts of Mexico City, but as time passed, anxiety set in — the appointments weren’t coming, and the inauguration of Donald Trump, who had won the November election on a promise to tighten immigration policies, was fast approaching. They decided to contact a group of migrants on Facebook that was organizing a trip to the north. On December 15, they met with 22 other people in the Zócalo (public square) in Mexico City.

The following month was difficult. The group endured the cold of the early mornings in the wagons of La Bestia, loaded with iron balls that contract in low temperatures. They evaded authorities at police and immigration checkpoints. And, worst of all, they faced death threats from the cartels. According to Ardila, the criminals noticed his clothes, which were in better condition than those of the migrants who had crossed the Darien jungle, between Colombia and Panama. In his view, this put him and his nephew at greater risk of assault and extortion.

“My nephew told me to forgive him for putting me in that situation. I told him that nothing was wrong, that I am strong, that we should go on,” says Ardila. To move forward, he turned more than ever to religion. “I read Psalm 23, 25, 91 and 121. They are for protection: they are read in moments of anguish,” he says. “Psalm 121, for example, says that God will take care of us when we leave and when we enter at any time along the way. We are going to walk the path of good, there will be no adversity that will touch us.”

They separated from the group on the last leg, from Monterrey to Matamoros. They paid every last peso they had to coyotes (human traffickers). It took them several days, but they were able to secure a spot in the cabin of a bus — a space normally reserved for the driver’s assistant — which allowed them to slip past Mexican immigration checkpoints.

Afterwards, Ardila and his nephew boarded a boat to the border, where they turned themselves in to U.S. authorities. It was January 20, the day Trump returned to power.

Ardila was detained in the United States for nine days. He spent two nights in a facility he calls “La Nevera” — “The Freezer” — which he describes as “inhumane.” He says the cells were overcrowded, that it was impossible to sleep because of the intensity of the electric lights, that the food portions were tiny, and that the guards made fun of the detainees.

“They said that I had entered the country illegally, that what I did was waste time and money, that who told me to turn myself in if I was going to be deported anyway,” says Adila. Some migrants were handcuffed right there and taken to the airport. “You, fucking Mexican, get up with all your trash —you’re leaving, you’re going to go to hell,” he once heard.

The second stage of Ardila’s detention took place at Port Isabel. Ardila says he was treated better there: his nephew was in the same room, the food was more plentiful and he could read e-books. He held onto hope that his interview might grant him permission to stay in the United States, even as fellow detainees warned that interrogations had grown longer and tougher since Trump’s return to power.

The most painful moment came when he was shackled. “I thought I wouldn’t happen because they said Petro didn’t like [the shackles],” he says. “I told the guards that I didn’t understand why I was being handcuffed, that I knew I was going to be deported, that I wasn’t going to escape. I had resigned myself to it: they had made the decision and there was nothing I could do.”

The return

The first hours after returning to Colombia are difficult. In a restaurant at El Dorado International Airport, he says he feels tension in his shoulders, that he is worried about his nephew — who is still in the United States — and that he sees being deported as “a huge defeat.” “Everything I have fought for, everything I have invested, everything I have done… for them to deport me?” he says. Once again, he turns to religion. “I tell myself that it is God’s will, that I was deported because God does not want me to be in the United States,” he says.

He also remembers that he will be reunited with his mother, his siblings and his great-nephew: “The blessing I have is that I am going to see my family. These five months outside the country were very hard.”

Leaving the airport lifts his spirits. In a taxi on the way to pick up the money Diana sent him, he talks instead about the differences between Mexico and Colombia, marveling at the capital city he’s never seen before.

“This is what the streets of Bucaramanga look like. I had not seen this for five months. There [in Mexico] you don’t see so many clothes sold on the street, you see more food. And there aren’t as many motorcycles,” he says.

He shares both positive and negative stories about his fellow travelers: laughing with a Brazilian who they tried to teach Spanish, sign language conversations with a Turk, and the story of an Ecuadorian whose boyfriend was murdered in Mexico.

He is grateful that he made friends from so many countries. “Everyone was sad when I left. They said: ‘What do you mean, you are going to Colombia? Are they going to deport you? ’ They wrote down their emails and Facebook accounts.”

Animated, Ardila seems the complete opposite of the image Trump painted of him and other deportees — “murderers, drug lords, gang members, just the toughest people you‘ve ever met or seen.” He greets a security guard on the street and is effusive and friendly with the local merchants.

Before getting on his bus at the Salitre Terminal, he shows the only thing that the U.S. authorities left him aside from his documents: a Bible that his mother and brother gave him in 1999. Inside, there is a pamphlet about marches defending the Santurbán moor, as well as a birthday letter that an estranged friend gave him 15 years ago. He still keeps the letter because; “You have to hold on to the nice things about people.”

The reunion

A week later, Ardila says via WhatsApp that he is back at work. His former boss quickly called him after he was deported and offered to rehire him. “My colleagues already knew I had arrived because they saw me on a TV news report,” he says. “Everyone is very happy. They tell me: ‘Welcome! Welcome to Colombia!’”

The family’s financial struggles persist. Ardila has gone to the Mayor’s Office to ask for help, but they informed him that they have not yet begun to distribute the credits for entrepreneurial incentives promised by the government.

The hope is that his nephew, who is still in the United States, will be able to stay and send money to pay the loan they took out before the trip. The family was encouraged by the news that he has already had his interview with the immigration authorities. “We have to wait for him to get a positive result, in the name of God,” says Ardila.

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