Captive No Longer
A human trafficking survivor's story of pursuing freedom and hope against all odds.
The Kidnapping
2010. Florida Coastline. Early morning.
The waves beneath the boat rocked them back and forth. Yemi was barely aware of the motion, barely aware of the low, cold metal of the bench on which he was perched; of the murmurs of about a dozen unknown men crouched around him; of the smells of saltwater, bodily fluids, sweat; of the hunger and thirst which at times were agonizing; of the pitch darkness of the small space.
He was trapped beneath the deck of a boat traveling to who-knows-where, in a sort of half-consciousness, more awake inside his mind than to his surroundings.
Inside his head floated various images, both from his memory as well as delirious visions that came in and out of focus. In that interminable night under the boat deck he was wracked with memories, simultaneously painful and grounding, of his home in Nigeria – of his beloved mother and father, brothers and sisters; his parents’ house; of the landscape, vegetation, and climate of his native place.
His mind also repeatedly fixated on his departure – his kidnapping – and the days preceding it. He was sometimes tortured with the question of why, why had it happened – it could have so easily gone another way, been prevented before it was all too late.
Two years prior Yemi had been a car mechanic in his home city in Nigeria, working long hours at an auto shop, but bringing home meager earnings to help support his growing, extended family. He was basically content, but restless, looking for ways to advance to earn more money and make a better life.
A group of men began frequenting the autobody shop where he worked, looking for repairs on their expensive cars. They were well-to- do – one of them, he knew, worked at the U.S. embassy. While Yemi worked on their cars these men began casually chatting with him.
One of the men took a particular interest in Yemi and his work. As he watched Yemi work, he told him that he was a good mechanic, but he could be even better if he worked on American cars and got specialized training in America. He told Yemi that through his friend at the embassy he could get him a temporary visa to go train in the U.S. on American cars, and he could return to Nigeria with better skills to work his way up in the trade. When he was making more money, he could begin paying the men back for the cost of his travel.
Yemi was intrigued. It sounded perfect.
The man seemed sincere, and trustworthy — after all, he had connections at the embassy. After several more run-ins with the group of men, Yemi agreed to go. His younger brother was supportive, and even offered to serve as a guarantor of the “loan” Yemi was taking out to the men to cover his travel for the program.
He was instructed to first fly to Senegal, where they would then depart together for the United States. He booked a flight, said a cheerful goodbye to his family, and landed in the capitol of Senegal. He followed directions to the residence of one of the men from the autobody shop — and that was where his nightmare began.
Along with a group of other men – strangers who were also there – his passport was forcibly taken. The men from the autobody shop’s demeanors became menacing. They had his documents; they threatened his life and his family; there was nothing he could do. Along with a group of other men from West Africa he was flown to Portugal, then Venezuela, then Trinidad and Tobago, and eventually to Cuba.
When they got to Cuba, he and the other enslaved men were forced to perform back-breaking labor. They were nearly starved, held in dark shacks, abused, and had all their movement and communications restricted.
Part of the time in Cuba they were forced to work as fishermen at a dock. Yemi was a life-long vegan. He protested at having to kill animals as part of his work, but this brought him even more extreme physical abuse.
Yemi knew his family probably thought he was dead. He had not been in contact with them. In truth, he sometimes wished he were dead – and he knew he was not alone. He had seen other enslaved men jump off the fishing boats in an attempt to either escape or die trying. He was occasionally tempted to do the same – though something in him, a persistent will to survive, pushed him through each day.
Most days he felt more like an animal than a person. He lived hour by hour for the meager food provisions, the bits of sleep in which there was respite from abuse. His mind had become cloudy, his spirits constantly at rock-bottom.
Sometimes the warm glint of sun on his cheek while out on the fishing boat made his heart lift slightly, momentarily – until a blow to the head from his captors brought him back down.
This half-conscious stupor was what remained with him now, in the boat. They were being moved again, and he didn’t care where. Just before dawn he felt the boat being docked; they were taken from below deck and placed in a van, driven and dropped off on a curb somewhere. It looked like a bus station.
Sometime after dawn someone handed him a bus ticket – he wasn’t quite sure how – and directed him toward a bus. He climbed aboard a Greyhound and sat down. Many hours later, he disembarked with a few of his fellow captives and stood in the sunlight, still dazed. The traffickers were gone; the men were alone. They stood there, stupefied, until a kindly stranger pointed them down the street, telling them that in the building at the corner they might find something to eat.
Guided by their hunger, they entered what appeared to be a soup kitchen and sat down. They were given plates of food and greeted with warm smiles, but as he and his fellow captives scarfed down the food, Yemi looked at his surroundings warily. The traffickers had told them that if they spoke to anyone, they would be punished. So he and the others gave false names and evaded questions.
But as food revived his body, his mind came alive a bit. His traffickers were nowhere in sight, and this place was like no other they’d been to yet. Where, where were they? He had to know.
He turned to a volunteer. “Excuse me, ma’am, what is this place? Where are we?”
She blinked with surprise. “Why, this is the central men’s shelter, and you’re in Charlotte, North Carolina.”
North Carolina! That meant they were in the United States! He had started to piece this together as he looked at his surroundings, and now this confirmed it.
Here he was in the place he’d intended – but now a shell of himself, and still captive.
He slept that night on the floor of the shelter with dozens of other men. As he waited to fall asleep, he was aware that for the first time in two years he was not under the direct gaze of his captors. His mind struggled against glimmers of hope – could he manage to escape from them, now that he was here in the United States, a country of freedom, of laws?
But no, he couldn’t let himself think that way. Certainly they would find him here.
“The Worst Has Happened”
2017. Seven Years Later. North Carolina, USA.
Yemi was bent over under the hood of a car, hands stained with grease and oil, focusing his mind on tinkering with this car part until the engine would spur back to life. He felt the sun on his back and legs, and a warm breeze tickled his skin.
Nearly seven years had passed since he arrived in the United States – seven long, and yet hardly memorable, years.
Quickly after gaining his bearings at that downtown men’s shelter, he had found a way to contact his family in Nigeria to let them know he was alive. It was joyous to speak to them again – but the joy was quickly tempered when he learned that the traffickers had gotten in contact with his family and were demanding more money.
The traffickers said they would kill his family unless he paid them off. After two years of their brutality, Yemi knew they were serious. So, unsure of what else to do, he looked for work.
By a stroke of luck, or providence, there was mechanic shop near the men’s shelter. He came to know the owner, and they arranged that occasionally he could do some mechanic work in the parking lot of the shop. Over time, he built up a clientele, mostly of Nigerian clients who came to know of his services by word of mouth.
This was also an entry into the local Nigerian community. Cautiously, he made friends with his local countrymen, though keeping most people at a bit of a distance.
He most often slept at the men’s shelter, unless someone offered him somewhere else to stay, and ate whatever he could. He worked and sent money to his family to pay off the traffickers. He socialized a bit. This was his life – and somehow seven years had passed.
Still tinkering in the hood of the car, his phone rang. He looked down – it was his mother in Nigeria. But it would be very early morning in Nigeria, too early to call. Puzzled, he picked up the phone.
“Hello? Mama?”
His mother was hysterical. He could hardly understand her. Calm down, mama, he said. Calm down and tell me what happened.
He managed to extract the words from her. Just hours before, at 2 or 3 in the morning, his brother had been murdered in his house by the traffickers.
The news went through him like a lightning bolt. Yemi’s whole body seized up; his heart constricted; stomach convulsed.
No, it could not be true. He had just spoken with his brother yesterday, heard his joking, joyful voice – his brother’s new baby’s naming ceremony had occurred just the day before.
His brother could not be dead.
Yemi said those words to his mother, hardly knowing what he was saying, and just heard frantic sobbing on the other line.
He hung up the phone and sank down onto the pavement. His head was swimming. Darkness descended on him; the warmth of the sun was gone. It was like he was back trapped under the boat; half alive, half conscious.
The worst had happened, and it was all his fault.
A Forced Hand
One Day Later, 2017. North Carolina.
Yemi strode quickly down a downtown street, his heart racing. He pulled open the heavy door of the bank and stepped inside. It was cool and quiet, a calm and controlled atmosphere, which contrasted greatly with the pounding panic inside his head and chest.
He stood in line to speak with a bank teller. Was he really about to do this?
Yes – there was no other option. After the call from his mother yesterday, the family had heard from the traffickers again. If he wanted the rest of his family to stay alive, Yemi had to follow careful instructions.
Hours before he had met up with a man affiliated with the traffickers at a pre-determined location and was handed a fake ID. He was to go to a bank and attempt to withdraw a cashier’s check for thousands of dollars. Then he was to hand over the money.
Yemi had followed the instructions blindly. He was still overcome with shock and grief over his brother’s murder, his vision hazy, his breaths shallow. He could not sleep or eat.
He knew what the traffickers were asking him to do was extremely risky, but he did not care what happened to him. He would do almost anything to save his family more pain.
Now, he sat down at the teller’s desk and tried to assume a calm voice. He presented the ID and watched as she processed his request. She turned the ID over, and again. After a minute the teller rose and moved to a phone at the back of the office. Her back was turned to him as she made a call. She did not return to the windowpane, so Yemi sat and waited.
About 10 minutes later he saw two policemen open the bank doors and approach him. His heart beat even more wildly – this was it, he’d been caught. They began to question him about his identity. He floundered; he didn’t have believable false answers to give.
He was taken in their car to the police station and fingerprinted. The police could not find any record of him in their database. Yemi decided that the only thing to do now was tell the truth, perhaps the whole story. Maybe they would listen – maybe, since this was the United States, they could help.
He told them about his kidnapping: how he came to America; how they’d forced him to attempt this crime, threatening his family; how they knew where he was even now – but as he spoke, he watched the policemen’s faces harden like stone.
They did not believe him. They did not care. There was nobody – nobody – in this country who could help him.
Imprisonment
Five Years Later, 2022. Virginia.
Yemi sat at a table in the middle of the recreation space in his pod in the detention center. Under the fluorescent lights he watched the other detainees milling about, conversing in muted voices, watching the TVs anchored to the walls.
There was a dullness, a numbness inside him and all around. This day would be like all others – gray, interminable, hideous.
He had been imprisoned for five years. Five years of the darkest time of his life – including when he’d been in the hands of the traffickers.
He wasn’t sure how he had survived this long. There had been some near shaves with death. Once, when COVID had nearly taken his life, and other times when he’d been so suicidal he didn’t think he would make it through the week.
After being convicted of identity theft, he had been sent first to jail and then to a prison in Virginia. When he finished his sentence there, he was sent to another part of Virginia to an ICE detention center to await deportation.
In these five years he had faced regular abuse – verbal, physical, and sexual – from other inmates and from guards. He had faced prolonged solitary, windowless isolation, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. He became severely emaciated during that time, too, particularly when food provisions were limited to just bread and baloney, which he would not eat as a vegan. He had at times gone weeks and months without seeing the sky outside.
But the very worst time had been a year or so ago. One morning he made one of his limited phone calls to check in with a Nigerian friend back in North Carolina. During that call she had informed Yemi that she had gotten terrible news from his family in Nigeria: in the absence of more money from him, the traffickers had also killed his mother and father.
Once again, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t process this horror; his mind was paralyzed with this unfathomable reality.
The news sent Yemi into the deepest depression of his life. He felt he had failed completely as a son and a brother. He had no will to live, for weeks, for months. He was in an impenetrable cloud of darkness.
Somehow the days passed, and he survived.
He continued the monotonous regimen of prison life, time marching forward. Eventually, he began to read books again, which helped his mind escape the pain for a few hours. He tried to meditate in his cell. He lived for the recreation hour where he could see the sky.
Now, months later, as he sat listlessly watching the other detainees, he spotted a guard standing nearby who was eyeing him. This would normally have made him uneasy, but this guard was African. He had a friendly demeanor. He was one of the guards whom Yemi would occasionally see strike up a conversation with a detainee.
The guard came over to Yemi and asked him where he was from. They began lightly conversing, Yemi at first holding back, but then sharing a bit more as he grew more comfortable. The guard asked how Yemi had gotten to the United States. Feeling at this point he had little to lose, Yemi explained about the trafficking, and how he’d ended up in prison.
The guard raised his eyebrows. He pointed at a poster on the nearby wall. “Have you talked to these people?” The poster was for a group that provided free legal aid. Yemi shook his head. He knew many people in detention were seeking free legal aid, and almost none had gotten it. Besides, when Yemi had interacted with the U.S. court system in the past, telling his story had gotten him nowhere.
“Just give them a call,” urged the guard. “I’ve heard they can help people who have been trafficked.”
Days later, Yemi picked up the detention center phone and called the number on the poster.
“This is Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, how can we help you?”*
He was eventually connected with the legal department. He spoke with an attorney named Laura. She first asked a few basic questions about his story and situation.
When he shared some about his life, she replied to him with such concern and warmth that Yemi felt it as a sort of shock to his system. He hadn’t met with such kindness in years. With her courteous, gentle voice, she sounded to him like an angel.
She explained that, based on his story, she thought he could possibly be a candidate for a special U.S. visa for survivors of human trafficking, called a T visa.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt something like hope pass through him, like a trickle of warm blood running through cold veins.
Freedom
2023. North Carolina.
On a spring day Yemi pushed open the doors of the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy and walked outside. As he strolled down the road toward the bus stop, he passed glorious, flowering trees and noted the brilliant blue sky.
He was just leaving a meeting with his local attorney, Rebekah Niblock.** She had said he was well on his way to being granted a T visa, which would give him the chance to remain safely in the United States and to later apply for permanent residence.
Almost a year ago, he had been released from detention after extensive help from his Virginia-based attorney, Laura. He’d been given an ankle monitor, which he hated but tolerated, because anything was better than detention. On the day of his release, he purchased a greyhound bus ticket back to North Carolina with help from a friend in Charlotte.
Walking down the street in Charlotte on that first day back, he felt like a dead person come back to life. He was emaciated, and he was still partly numb on the inside from all the horror he had undergone, but he felt the wind on his face like never before, the sun on his cheeks, the unbelievable feeling of being able to dictate where he went and what he ate that day.
He slowly fell back into his former routines and friendships. He continued his work as a mechanic, picking up jobs wherever he could.
But even now, he was still homeless. He’d temporarily received stable housing from a nonprofit, but that had ended so he was back to sleeping at the shelter or in friends’ cars or homes. Even though he may have been able to afford housing at times, he could not get an apartment because he still had a criminal record. No one would rent to someone with a felony.
He was also still paying around $300,000 in restitution on his attempted theft case – which came out right now to 50 dollars per month.
“All of this is unjust,” his lawyer, Rebekah, told him. “You should have been protected by the law as a trafficking survivor from the beginning. You should have been made aware of your options. None of that should have happened.”
She was right, but what could he do about that now? His life was hard, far from ideal, but when people asked him how he was doing, what he was living for these days, he said, “Freedom, and the outdoors.” Nothing filled him with as much satisfaction as enjoying sunsets, sunrises, the sight of evergreen trees, mountains, flowers bursting with color.
Another deeply satisfying development was that following the recognition from U.S. authorities that he had been trafficked, one of his captors had been arrested back in Nigeria. Since then, his remaining family had not been contacted by the traffickers.
There was much to be grateful for, he told Rebekah. He had not died; he had not thrown himself off a fishing boat like some of his fellow captives. Somehow, he was still here.
The kindness of people like her reminded him that there was goodness in the world worth living for, and the possibility of a future free of fear. Like the glint of bright sky outside his prison window, day-to-day, that knowledge could keep him going.
*Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition (CAIR) is now known as the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights.
**Rebekah Niblock now works as a senior supervising attorney at CLINIC. She previously worked at Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy, a CLINIC Affiliate organization.
This story was written by Kathleen Kollman Birch, project manager for Communications at CLINIC, through extensive interviews with Yemi, whose name has been changed for privacy. The story was visually designed by Ryan Saunders, multimedia designer at CLINIC.
CLINIC wishes to thank Yemi for his courage in sharing his story, as well as CLINIC attorney Rebekah Niblock, who zealously continues to represent him as her pro bono client.
If you would like to learn more about visa options for human trafficking survivors, known as T visas, please click here.
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