In the spring of 2024, Hernán Portela and Karen Umaña sold everything they owned and moved from Bogotá, Colombia, to the United States. They wanted their children to get a good education, grow up in safety and be with family members who had lived in Los Angeles for decades.
After crossing the border from Mexico, they surrendered to the Border Patrol, which gave them ankle monitors and let them continue on.
They settled in quickly. Karen’s minimum-wage job and Hernán’s work washing cars enabled them to enjoy their new life in Los Angeles and even send money to family back in Bogotá.
But then that life was upended. Last December, Hernán was detained at a routine immigration appointment (he would eventually be sent to a facility in Louisiana); soon after, Karen and their children were sent to a detention facility in Dilley, Texas. On Feb. 16, Hernán was deported.
By now, the stories of family separation and of people sent to countries they had never been to have become routine. Less familiar is what happens to the hundreds of thousands of people, including almost 22,000 Colombians in the first three months of this year, who have been deported back to the places they were desperate to leave behind. How do they rebuild their lives there?
What Happens After Deportation? A Family Leaves Their American Dream Behind. Photographs by Juan Arredondo Text by Jaime Lowe May 26, 2026
-
Hernán arrived in Bogotá alone. He had lost 15 pounds and hadn’t slept in days. He was suffering from a respiratory infection and was worried about Karen and their children, Mateo and Christopher.
He didn’t know when he would hear from them again.
But the same day Hernán arrived in Bogotá, Karen, Mateo and Christopher were unexpectedly deported to Bogotá as well.
As Karen boarded the plane to leave Texas, she cried. “I would finally see Hernán, I was finally out of Dilley, but I knew we’d never return to Los Angeles. That place felt like a dream.”
For the first time in months, the family was all together.
Hours later, the children, who were sick from their time in detention, crashed. Mateo, who is 9, and Christopher, who is 8, hadn’t slept on a bed with a mattress in months. At Dilley, they had shared a holding area with five other families.
For their first meal, Hernán’s sister made them homemade envueltos , a sweet tamale that is hard to find in the United States.
Later that day, Karen’s parents, Omaira and Mario, came to visit Hernán.
Until then, they didn’t know that their daughter and grandchildren were also out of detention and had returned to Bogotá.
When Hernán and Karen emigrated two years earlier, no one knew when they would be together again.
In Los Angeles, they had lived with four members of Hernán’s family in a two-bedroom house. Once they had jobs — Hernán washing cars and driving for Uber, Karen working nights at a tortilla factory — they helped with the rent.
Now they were living rent-free in a house owned by a family member, but they had no savings and no income. “The cost of living is so much higher here,” Hernán says. “It’s more expensive to buy clothes and food than it is in the U.S.” Inflation is high, and basic goods are harder to come by for many families in Colombia.
When Hernán felt better, he was determined to make this place a home.
Having arrived with nothing, they relied on family members to help with things like groceries and clothing.
On the first Sunday back at their old church, Karen cried for hours. “I asked God so many questions. Why had things turned out this way? ”
There were also bright moments in those early days: soccer, family meals, visits to the arcade.
A few weeks after their return to Bogotá, several boxes were delivered from Los Angeles. “This might sound dumb,” Karen says, “but when I arrived in L.A., I didn’t have much. When I got my first check, I bought small things like perfume or mascara or nail clippers. And when I saw them again in the box, I felt transported to another time.”
Christopher and Mateo’s school computers also came from Los Angeles; their principal thought it might be possible for them to finish the school year remotely.
During a video call with their former classmates, one student asked them when they were coming back. Their parents had no answer for them.
The plan to finish the Los Angeles school year fell apart after administrators stopped responding to Karen. While they waited to be enrolled in a local school, Christopher and Mateo played video games and watched cartoons and YouTube bloopers.
In the years before their move to America, Hernán and Karen had run a coffee cart together to make money. Hernán also worked as a taxi driver. During one ride, a passenger stabbed him 10 times.
A few weeks after they arrived back in Bogotá, Hernán returned to driving.
If Hernán picks up a passenger who makes him nervous — he drives in an area of Bogotá that is known to be rough — he’ll stay on the phone with Karen so she can make sure he’s OK.
“I’m worried that this is our only source of income,” Karen says. “We can barely cover expenses, and we’re not paying rent right now. So if we ever have to move and pay rent, we won’t be able to make ends meet.” She has thought about looking for work as a house cleaner, but she needs to be at home by 12:30 p.m., when the kids get out of school.
On the one day a week that Hernán gets off, they try to do something as a family.
After taking placement tests, Christopher was enrolled in second grade and Mateo in fourth.
“My friends from first grade and second grade are in my class now, and we became friends again because they knew me already,” Mateo says.
Because Christopher first learned to read and write in English, Karen has been tutoring him in Spanish so that he can catch up. He was outgoing at school in Los Angeles, but back in Bogotá he became quiet and reserved.
“I do believe the sun will shine for us again in the future, and I know we’re not doing poorly — we have a place to stay, we have food — but it’s so hard to have so little control, so little choice,” Karen says. She worries about crime and about having to move and pay rent. But so far they have been lucky, and stability might come with time.
Karen still dreams of leaving Bogotá. “Really, I want to migrate again, to move while the kids are still young and can be enrolled in good schools so that they can get a good education,” she says. “It might be Spain; it might be Canada. I can’t stop thinking about all the possibilities.”
Juan Arredondo is a Colombian American documentary photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on human rights, migration and conflict across Latin America and the United States. Jaime Lowe is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of three books, including “Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires.”
