I have been “detained” by the Department of Homeland Security for over ten months now, as I had been fighting my deportation case and hoping for a second chance. I really don’t like the word detained because I feel it is a word used by “them” in an attempt to lessen the truth; that I am their prisoner.

It seems all I have been doing in my life is adapting to major changes, one after the other. From the loss of my father at seventeen, to adapting to military life, to getting used to a 6x9 cell. I have had to make some major adjustments and I have come to learn that change is inevitable.

However, I never would have guessed that I would now be getting ready to be deported to a country I know nothing about. I never thought I would be preparing to be banished from the only country I have known, the country I volunteered to fight for, and not to mention the country that my family lives in.

I thought I had fully prepared myself for this but, I can’t escape the incredible feeling of uncertainty throughout my body. Something I can’t stop thinking about is the flight I will be placed on to Honduras; the country my family and I immigrated from when I was only nine months old. I think of the cold shackles I will be wearing and how nervous I will be. I’m gonna be surrounded by so many fellow deportees with whom I have only one thing in common; where we were born. I wonder how many of them will have spent their entire lives in the U.S. before being deported? How many of them have served in the U.S. Armed forces? But it really doesn’t matter. We are all leaving our lives behind. We are all being torn from what means most to human beings no matter what your birth certificate says…our families!

I like to think of myself as a pretty strong minded person and I can say that I have taken all that has happened recently considerably well, but the one thing that I will never forget, the one thing that really hurt me was having to tell my family of my fate. I had never felt as helpless and deeply saddened as the day I heard my mother weep on the phone after I told her I was being deported. I tried to prepare them for my possible deportation, but it was not enough. Her heart was broken. My whole family feels wronged.

They (my family) tell me to be strong and faithful and I do have faith. Any day now I will be told to get my stuff together by an officer, and told to get on that plane. What is meant to happen from there, I will soon find out.

When Armando wrote this letter around March 10th, while he was still detained in the United States. Since then we learned that Armando’s deportation was actually carried out days after he wrote this letter. Look for Part II of Armando’s story when he tells us about his actual journey, his entry into Honduras as a U.S. deportee, and his first 48 hours in Honduras. Armando’s story provides us with a rare inside look at the actual removal of a US detainee, from detention to actual deportation.

Raha Jorjani is a Staff Attorney at the UC Davis School of Law’s Immigration Law Clinic where she supervises students in providing legal assistance and representation to detained immigrants facing deportation.