Sam Kangethe sat on a plastic container in his 5-year-old daughter Ella’s room — a giant in a kingdom of toppled toys.
His flight to Kenya was leaving soon, he gently told her. He was going somewhere safe, and she could reach him anytime. And one day, he promised, she’d come too, and together they’d watch pink flamingoes under the African sky.
Her soft sobs erupted into cries that filled the room. “I love you. You’re my bestie,” he whispered as he pulled her close, in a moment captured on video.
It was August, just before the start of the school year, and Kangethe was returning to the country he’d left 16 years before to attend college in Michigan.
He wasn’t just going on a vacation or to visit relatives. As an immigrant living in the US without permanent residency, he was self-deporting to his homeland.
Kangethe was leaving his wife, Latavia, and their three children at the home they shared in Lansing, Michigan, about 90 miles from Detroit. And he didn’t know when, or if, he’d be back.
Ella, the youngest, clung to him in the moments before he left for the airport. In her room, father and daughter shared one final moment among her dollhouses, Barbies and figurines.
“I was trying to divert her attention … and focus on when she will come visit me,” Kangethe said later. “Pink is her favorite color. The idea was to show her there is some good that can come from me leaving instead of sad and negative things.”
Burdened with anxiety over the possibility of sudden deportation to an unfamiliar country where he knew no one, Kangethe, 39, decided in March to return to Kenya. It was a choice that gave him time to prepare his family.
He spent the next few months doing just that. He quit his job as a state accountant in May to free up his summer. Family dinners stretched longer. So did evening board games. At night, he lingered in the kids’ doorways, trying to memorize their faces.
And now, the dreaded day – August 17 – had arrived. After his conversation with Ella and last hugs with his wife and their two other children, he loaded five suitcases, a backpack and a golf bag in a red truck. A friend drove him to the Detroit airport to spare his family the heartbreak of rushed goodbyes at the terminal, he said.
Back home in Lansing, Latavia and the children huddled together and wept.
“We agreed to say our ‘see you laters’ here at home. Not so much goodbye, but see you later,” said Latavia, 35. “And Ella, I got extremely emotional just watching her tiny little heart break.”
Meanwhile, Kangethe boarded a flight for a life of unknowns. But he left on his own terms.
“I decided I would rather take myself out rather than arrive at an airport in shackles,” he said. “I wanted to come home with my dignity, in one piece.”
He came to the US to study accounting
Kangethe arrived in Lansing on an F-1 student visa in January 2009.
He got an associate degree in accounting from Lansing Community College before earning a diploma from Northwood University in Midland, Michigan. As he worked toward a higher degree, he got a job – first as an accountant for a Lansing beer distributor and until this past May, in a similar role with the state of Michigan, he said.
His former company’s president, Dan Henry, told CNN he’s stayed in contact with Kangethe since he changed jobs five years ago and has spoken to a former US congressman on his behalf.
“I know him,” he added, speaking of Kangethe. “He’s a productive member of society and is the kind of person we want in America. He’s a quality, hardworking and responsible human being. He’s got a family here. He hasn’t committed any crimes.”
Last year, Kangethe completed his master’s in finance, hoping it would open more career doors.
“I went to the US to get a college degree,” he told CNN from his sister’s house in Nairobi. “Everything else after that is a bonus, a beautiful bonus.”
As Kangethe pursued his education, he started building a personal life, too. He got married in 2012, and his then-spouse petitioned for his permanent resident status, also known as a green card. He received a two-year conditional green card. But when it was time to renew it, immigration officials flagged the marriage as fraudulent, he said. He declined to get into details about his case because it’s still pending.
Kangethe continued working as he waited for a judge to review his case. His case eventually was dropped from the court docket, throwing him into legal limbo, he said.
“From 2014 to this time, I would always go back (to federal immigration offices) and they would stamp my passport … to extend my temporary residence, which gave me permission to work,” he said. “And that’s how I was even able to buy a house and work and all that stuff,” he said.
He remarried, but it hasn’t changed his legal status
But Kangethe could not renew his temporary status last year without a court date, he said.
Once immigration officials allege fraud, only a judge can determine someone’s permanent residency status, said Alex Isbell, an immigration attorney with a Philadelphia-based law firm.
So with no hearing and no ruling from a judge, Kangethe was stuck in a bureaucratic void — and considered deportable.
He ultimately got a divorce and met his current wife, Latavia, when they both briefly worked as home care health aides in a group home.
At the time, Latavia had two children. He was struck by her maturity and compassion, he said, and their friendship slowly developed into something more.
In May 2018, the couple married at Lansing’s Frances Park surrounded by blooming rose gardens and nearly 100 guests. Today, they have a blended family that includes Latavia’s two children – Dwight, 13 and Hailey, 12 – along with the couple’s youngest daughter, Ella.
Soon after, Kangethe applied for another marriage-based green card. But his application was denied because of the earlier fraud allegation, he said.
“They called us for multiple interviews,” Kangethe said. “The guy who was interviewing me told me, ‘Man, I’m so sorry, my hands are tied.’”
The couple has since spent tens of thousands of dollars on immigration attorneys to fight for Kangethe’s case, without much success.
“We tried and tried and tried,” he said.
They spent a bittersweet summer together before he left
Kangethe embraced instant fatherhood after he married Latavia.
He twirled Hailey at father-daughter dances. He was the loud, cheering dad at Dwight’s lacrosse games. At the height of the pandemic, Ella arrived, sweeping him into a new world of Barbies and Bluey.
And as immigration raids escalated in the spring of this year, fear began to cloud simple outings like family trips to the park. He saw videos of ICE arrests on social media, and his anxiety spiked.
His friends told him to lay low and avoid the outdoors.
“But how do you lay low when you have kids?” he said. “I felt like I was falling into a deep depression. My kids started asking me, ‘Daddy, why are you always sleeping when you’re not working?’”
This spring he discussed his fears with Latavia and told her about his plans to self-deport. She was stunned.
“We went for a drive, and I tried to convince him to stay, but it wouldn’t work,” she said. “I told him we can seek more legal support, but at that point, he had his mind made up.”
Her husband explained how the immigration crackdowns were making him feel stressed and isolated, and “At that point, I realized how serious it was,” she said.
“Once I started to (understand) there wasn’t anything that was going to change it, I went through different kinds of grief. I was angry. I was sad,” she said. “As a mom, I wished I could just hide him here and keep him safe and have the kids have him 24/7, but that’s not fair.”
Both she and her husband get emotional when they recall the moment they gathered their kids to break the news.
“All the children heard was, ‘I’m gonna be leaving you.’ And everybody broke down. And I started crying myself, too,” Kangethe said. “I tried to be strong and just tell them that was the best option for me to avoid living in fear.”
The couple notified their children’s school so teachers would be aware when classes resumed in the fall. Kangethe resigned from his job and filled the family’s summer calendar with a whirlwind of activities: playground visits, coloring sessions and trips to the beach.
During a trip to Holland State Park on Lake Michigan, they marked Hailey’s birthday early with a rainbow confetti cake. By the time she turned 12 in late August, Kangethe would already be in Kenya.
He also prepared the family for a future without him – arranging for a regular handyman to help with house projects, replacing their car’s tires for Michigan’s harsh winters and paying off his SUV so his son can afford to drive it when he’s old enough.
“I want to make sure I can support them as much as I can, even when I’m not here,” he said.
Their children are struggling to adapt to home life without their dad
Two months into their separation, the family is still trying to find its rhythm.
Kangethe spends a lot of time on FaceTime with the children – listening to their stories, sharing his own or simply sitting in silence together. With a seven-hour time difference, the calls happen at odd hours, he said.
On a recent call, the girls jostled over who would talk to him first during a car ride with their mother. They asked him how he’d say their names in Swahili. “It’s still the same, silly goose,” he told them.
Some calls end in tears, others in laughter, depending on the day. The older kids are having a hard time juggling their father’s absence with the challenges of adolescence, Latavia said. Ella is struggling to understand why their father left and gets anxious when her mother leaves the house. She lashes out in anger sometimes.
“She has changed a lot. I see a lot more anger and anxiety … she doesn’t understand, like, when I’m going to work I’m gonna come back home,” Latavia said. “To see her go from this very well-behaved 5-year-old, lots of manners … to something completely different is probably one of the worst things.”
Latavia has enrolled the children in therapy while she learns to adjust to life as a single mother of three.
“Every family has their own routine, and once the other person that’s a big part of that routine is absent, it really does make a big difference,” she said. “We’re all struggling, emotionally, mentally and financially. But our children are struggling the most.”
Latavia’s cousin set up a GoFundMe to help her navigate financial challenges as the family adjusts to their new life. Most of their savings went to legal fees for Kangethe’s immigration case, she said.
In Kenya, he’s still trying to figure out his next steps
In leaving the US for his home country, Kangethe is not alone. The US’s foreign-born population shrank by more than 1 million people during the first six months of 2025, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. As of late August, ICE had deported almost 200,000 people since President Trump took office.
In May President Trump launched Project Homecoming, a program to help undocumented immigrants voluntarily return to their home countries. Participants receive a free one-way flight, a $1,000 stipend and forgiveness of prior fines for failure to depart.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told CNN that tens of thousands of people have used the program to leave the country. The spokesperson did not respond to questions about Kangethe’s case.
Kangethe said he returned home on his own and did not use the program.
In Kenya, he’s searching for accounting jobs as he readjusts to his new life. But he hasn’t given up on his immigration fight in the US. He has another court hearing before a Detroit judge scheduled for January 23, and he plans to attend via Zoom.
He has no regrets, he said.
“I’m doing better than I had anticipated … I know I’m still very fresh here, but I’m lighter in the sense that I don’t have that cloud that was hanging over my shoulder the whole time I was there,” he said.
Kangethe misses his wife and children, and understands that some people may think he abandoned his family. He sees it differently: as his only way of escaping a life of fear and demonstrating his good intentions to immigration officials.
“I know myself and why I did it – and needed to do that. And if my wife and kids understand, I don’t care what anybody else thinks,” he said. “I feel free now. My family can reach me anytime and know where I am. There, I was just surviving and hoping that somebody will not pick me up and take me to El Salvador or whatever … I couldn’t live like that. That’s not living to me.”
The couple has discussed Latavia and the kids visiting him in Kenya. But with a son in a special-needs program, they’re hesitant to disrupt their routines with a permanent move.
“Just leaving a country is not easy. … If it was just him and I, maybe. But for the three of them, it wouldn’t have been fair to them,” Latavia said.
“If he’s unable to come back, I really hope and pray that this entire situation sheds light on many other people facing these same challenges. Maybe it can change the outcome of others and their families.”
‘For the last 16 years, I believe I’ve been a good guest’
Meanwhile, Kangethe hopes that by sharing his story, someone will take another look at his case and help him reunite with his family — even if it’s just temporarily until his children are adults, he said.
His decision to leave was driven by a sense of integrity, not defiance, he said.
“As a guest, you live according to how your host wants you to live in their house. And for the last 16 years, I believe I’ve been a good guest,” he said. “And that’s why I made the decision to go back home as an act of good faith. This is not an ‘I quit so you can’t fire me’ kind of situation. This is, ‘I’m gonna do this in good faith.’”
Kangethe’s father died in 2018 from diabetes complications, but he couldn’t attend the funeral in Kenya because of his immigration status. So one of his first stops after he arrived in Kenya was at his mother’s house in Nakuru, about 100 miles from the capital of Nairobi.
His family gathered at the house for a party to welcome him.
Kangethe took a microphone and addressed relatives and loved ones he hadn’t seen in nearly two decades. They included young nieces and nephews who only knew him through photographs.
“I got so emotional, I couldn’t even talk,” he said.
In the same spot where his father once stood during Kangethe’s farewell party to America, he asked for a moment of silence for the man who raised him. It dawned on Kangethe that he’d left home as a young man and returned as a husband and a father.
He later visited his father’s grave in the backyard of the family home.
“Seeing for the first time where my dad was laid to rest was super emotional,” he said. “Especially now that I’m a father, too.”
At his father’s gravesite, he whispered to him that he’d earned his college degrees in the US, as promised. And that he’d come back home safely, as promised.
Then he made another promise: to find his way back to his wife and children.
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