The Day ICE Knocked on My Door

Fortune’s current AVP of Policy, Khalil Cumberbatch, had completed his prison sentence years before. But then immigration officers came calling. In this article for The Marshall Project, he describes his re-incarceration:

It began like any other spring day. I woke up in my apartment in Queens and went about my daily ritual of preparing a batch of coffee and watching the morning news. Then my plan was to wake up my daughters and get them ready for school. The sun was shining and so was my spirit, because I was just one week away from completing my master’s degree in social work. I had meticulously planned every step toward obtaining it, ever since I had been incarcerated.

But when the doorbell rang at 7 a.m., it was Immigration and Customs Enforcement waiting on the other side of the door. They were there to arrest me, based on my criminal conviction from over a decade ago: a robbery I committed at age 20 and had already served my time for. Coupled with the fact that I was a legal permanent resident — I’m from Guyana originally but have lived in Queens with my family since I was a toddler — this made me eligible for deportation proceedings.