<div><strong>TLDR;</strong> On December 15, 2025, my friend Benny was taken by ICE - he has been incarcerated for 225 days as of making this Go-Fund-Me. Benny is currently held at Mesa Verde Ice Processing Center, with his next hearing on September 1st, 2026.
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<div><strong>We have 30 days to raise $30,000 to pay for:</strong>
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<ul>
<li><strong>Lawyer Fees - $25,000</strong>
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<li><strong>Travel Home Fees - $5,000</strong>
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</ul>
<div><strong>In addition we are raising an extra $10k to pay for:</strong>
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<li><strong>Farm Rebuild Mutual Aid - $5,000</strong>
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<li><strong>Full studio album about Benny’s experience in ICE custody - $2,500</strong>
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<li><strong>Shoot/edit our documentary about his time in ICE custody - $2,500</strong>
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</ul>
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<div><strong>About Benny:</strong> Benny was brought from Guinea, Africa to the United States in 2011 by a dance and acrobatics troupe from New York City. At the time, he was only 17 years old and arrived on a H1B visa to be a dance/acrobatics instructor in NYC. Benny worked for the dance troupe for over 2 years without receiving a single payment for his labor. After his visa expired, Benny was turned out onto the streets of NYC to figure things out for himself. Barely an adult, he was able to find a job + room and board at a hotel restaurant in Manhattan.
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<div>Looking out from the sky-rise windows of his room over Lexington Avenue, Benny began to build a life in the city he had always dreamed of.
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<div>In 2018, Benny booked me as an audio engineer to record his music.
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<div>On Benny’s first day in the studio, he had an interpreter with him because he didn’t feel confident in his English. Halfway through the session, the interpreter told me that there was no point for him to be there because Benny and I understood each other even if we didn't communicate with the same language.
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<div>After that first session, we became fast friends and Benny started to come back to record every single week. Through 10 years working with me in the studio, Benny became fluent in English, and we recorded over 100 songs together. Over time, I witnessed Benny speak, sing, and freestyle in 9 different languages. Thanks to Benny, I became so much more aware of the effort it takes to learn English, but also the lack of credit polyglots in the United States receive. I was even able to learn a little SouSou and Patwah along the way.
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<div>During that time, it was us against the world!
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<div>Two young adults, barely drinking age, from small towns oceans apart. Me, a homeless disabled transgender audio engineer, and him, an African-Jamaican singer, trafficked to the US to dance.
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<div>We found each other fighting for the same dreams in the streets of NYC. Together we learned to sing our way through COVID, through societal collapse, through joy and suffering. In the day time, we both worked our asses off in restaurants; at night time, we would meet in the studio to record our stories
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<div><strong>Our dream was, and will always be, our freedom.</strong>
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<div>For the past 12 years, Benny has worked to build a life here in the US.
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<div>Benny got married, he renovated a house in Queens, NY and used it to buy a farm in NJ to raise goats, and start a business. He has a beautiful 1yr old daughter and he loves his life here.
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<div>Last December, Benny was harassed on the street of Vineland, NJ.
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<div>Fearing for his life, he went into a police station to file a police report. While in the police station, an ICE agent heard his African accent, gave Benny a deportation form, and lied claiming it was a harassment report. Benny did not understand the legal jargon on the paperwork, so he trusted the ICE agent and signed on the dotted line for his own incarceration.
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<div>On his first night in the concentration camp, Benny called me.
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<div>We cried on the phone together for 15 minutes before the call was cut off by the system.
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<div>He asked, “what’s going to happen to my daughter? My Farm? My Music? Will I disappear forever? They will make it like I never existed. Will I never get to tell my story?” I knew he wasn’t asking me, but praying to God for a miracle to get his freedom back.
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<div>That day, my heart shattered with his.
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<div>Our dreams were being tested right before his very eyes.
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<div>I promised him that I would NEVER leave him while he is in a crisis, and in the sound of thin silence on the prison phone, we started writing his next album with the song titled “This Is Not Forever."
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<div>It has been 225 days since that phone call, and we are now on the brink of getting him released with a permanent residency here in the US. This would allow him to get a bank account, own land, rebuild his farm, and finally give his daughter the farmraised-childhood he had always hoped to give her.
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<div>Benny celebrated Kwanza and Christmas away from his family - incarcerated.
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<div>He fasted for Ramadan in Dilley Detention Center months before the hunger strike.
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<div>He celebrated Eid by using our first mutual aid campaign to feed over 30 muslims in his unit.
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<div>He spent Memorial Day starved to the brink of death in Alligator Alcatraz
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<div>He spent the 4th of July in Mesa Verde Ice Processing Center.
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<div>As it stands, he will also spend his daughter’s 2nd birthday incarcerated.
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<div>To him, these past 9 months have felt like an eternity - but every day he sings “this is not forever” with the other men in his unit.
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<div>By all counts, Benny is an upstanding member of every community he has ever been a part of. He is a passionate father, an inspiring artist, and a generous neighbor. Even now as my friend Benny has nothing, he always gives everything.
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<div>Last week a new group of people arrived at Mesa Verde Ice Processing Center, and Benny told me he could see it in their eyes that they had been starved but they were too scared to ask for food. Without a word, Benny took the $50 I sent him that was earmarked to feed himself for the next few days, and gave all of his soups and noodles and sardines and mac and cheese away to 11 people. He told me that he knows they need it more than he does. Benny has lost over 50lbs while in ICE custody, and yet he could not watch the people around him starve to death: he is a farmer and a chef, after all.
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<div>Facing starvation has only increased his passion to rebuilding his farm in my neighborhood where we are committed to opening a farm-to-table restaurant/venue together called, “Bení Table”
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<div>Today we are asking 400 families to donate $100, adding up to $40,000, to help us reunite and restore our family.
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<div><strong>We have 30 days to raise $30,000 to pay for:</strong>
</div>
<ul>
<li><strong>Lawyer Fees - $25,000</strong>
</li>
<li><strong>Travel Home Fees - $5,000</strong>
</li>
</ul>
<div><strong>In addition we are raising an extra $10k to pay for:</strong>
</div>
<ul>
<li><strong>Farm Rebuild Mutual Aid - $5,000</strong>
</li>
<li><strong>Full studio album about Benny’s experience in ICE custody - $2,500</strong>
</li>
<li><strong>Shoot/edit our documentary about his time in ICE custody - $2,500</strong>
</li>
</ul>
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<div>With a small donation, we can all bring Benny home, and help him rebuild. <strong>Together.</strong>
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<div>My wife and I decided to sponsor Benny’s permanent residency months ago, but the financial weight of bringing him home is more than we can hold alone.
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<div><strong>None of us could ever bring anyone home alone.</strong>
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<div>Thank you to everyone who has contributed to Benny’s freedom.
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<div>Inshallah Benny will be free.
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<div>“This is not forever” - Benny
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Tamara Deutsch

Victoria Stevenson

Maria Uribe

Anonymous

Nina Puleo

Amanda Rix

Isabella Sites

Anastasia Knight

Melissa Rubio

Helena Lange

Rebecca Conway

Mariana Perez

Holli Leslie

Free Benny, Reunite a Family, Rebuild our Farm & Restaurant

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Free Benny, Reunite a Family, Rebuild our Farm & Restaurant

Still $32,172 to go. Help us build momentum.