Living Expenses for Neighbor Facing Deportation

My friend and neighbor, who wishes to remain anonymous, is asking for our help. For the past 5 years or so, he has been struggling with housing security after losing his wife to cancer, then eventually losing his job and visa. Ever since he became undocumented, he has been unable to find work and struggles to make ends meet by begging on the street. While he is currently housed, he is at the whim of an abusive landlord who seems to be preying on other housing-insecure and/or undocumented folks; leaving them in squalor-like conditions and charging them way more than they can reasonably afford. Accommodations there are neither safe nor sanitary, and she regularly conducts illegal lockouts, extortion, and extraction of labor.

Living like this is no longer sustainable, and it has left him in no position to take care of his family back home, nor his brother who is disabled and lives with him. He and his brother have recently decided to surrender to ICE in order to get flown back to India and be reunited with their family in Delhi. They have already been in court to finalize their deportation, which is expected to happen early to mid-May. While he is excited to be reunited with his family, and to no longer be struggling in a country that treats him as a second-class noncitizen, finding work back home will be its own challenge. It is difficult if not impossible to find work this time of year where his family lives, and most of their community are out of work and living below the poverty line. All funds will go toward living expenses for him and his family. This goal of $2000 should be enough to last them the roughly 6 months it will take him to find work and re-integrate into society. After everything he’s been through, I believe he deserves to enter this new phase of life from a place of strength and abundance, rather than insecurity and scaricity.

I will be in touch with him regularly over the next month. When it’s close to his time to leave, we will go to a currency exchange and send the funds directly to his family, after which this fundraiser will be taken down. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please share widely and donate whatever you can.