A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Trump administration has deported hundreds of thousands of people since it launched the ongoing crackdown on immigrants last year. For one man in Missouri, deportation meant leaving the country he had lived in for more than 40 years and trying to start a new life in the country where he was born. Reporter Addison Zanger of member station KBIA traveled to the Netherlands to meet him and see how he is adjusting to his new home.
ADDISON ZANGER, BYLINE: Owen Ramsingh is 45. He worked as a security guard and a property manager in the United States. And until last year, he lived with his wife and teenage daughter in the college town of Columbia, Missouri. Now when he travels on a train in the middle of the Netherlands, the stops are announced in Dutch, and he's in a whole different world.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: (Speaking Dutch).
ZANGER: Ramsingh says he has a lot to adapt to.
OWEN RAMSINGH: I don't understand no Dutch, which is going to be another learning thing for me.
ZANGER: His upheaval began last September. Ramsingh is a legal U.S. resident who has a green card and was traveling back home from the Netherlands when he was detained at O'Hare Airport by Border Patrol agents, who found out he had been convicted of a felony drug charge, possession of cocaine, nearly 30 years earlier in Omaha, Nebraska. So even though Ramsingh, who was tried as an adult, had served his time, he was sent to an El Paso ICE detention facility. Tricia McLaughlin, then an assistant secretary with the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement the government can revoke a green card if the nation's laws are broken and abused, saying that a green card was a, quote, "privilege, not a right." Ramsingh was deported to the Netherlands in February, leaving his wife and daughter 4,000 miles away.
O RAMSINGH: Getting off the plane, I mean, I was just - I was in shock.
ZANGER: Ramsingh last lived in the Netherlands when he was 5 years old. His mother and father were separated, and she took him to the United States. He says his time away from his wife and daughter has been difficult and his detention still causes him nightmares. Even so, unlike some who have been deported, Ramsingh is not completely alone. He lives with his father, who he reconnected with in person in 2009. Ramsingh says he has been a grounding presence throughout the whole process.
O RAMSINGH: Once we had the contact with each other, we realized, you know, that we are the same, basically. We are father and son, for sure. He's a big support system. And he just - he's keeping my head above water.
ZANGER: Ruben Ramsingh says he's grateful to be able to make up for that lost time with his son, but it doesn't make up for what his son has had to endure.
RUBEN RAMSINGH: The whole situation is so horrible, the way he have to move to here, detained, lose 40 years, everything he built up.
(SOUNDBITE OF DISHES CLINKING)
ZANGER: Now Ramsing's morning routine starts with a cup of tea with his father. And the family on different sides of the world is working to come back together. Ramsingh says once he finds a steady job and housing, his wife and daughter will join him. They've been able to visit him since he's been in the Netherlands. But he's missing out on big events, including his daughter's upcoming high school graduation.
O RAMSINGH: I will be on FaceTime so I'm able to watch her walk the stage. But just - it sucks not being there.
ZANGER: Even so, Ramsingh says he tries to remain positive.
O RAMSINGH: I feel safe. I feel like I'll succeed.
ZANGER: Succeed in the new place that Ramsingh has been forced to call home.
For NPR News, I'm Addison Zanger in Utrecht, Netherlands.
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