This man lived in Detroit since he was an infant. He died 3 months after ICE deported him to Iraq.

(Image credit: Edward A. Bajoka/Facebook)

last updated 8 August 2019

Jimmy Aldaoud has spent nearly his entire life in Detroit.

Yet amid an uptick in ICE raids, the 41-year-old diabetic man was picked up and deported to Iraq, where he says he couldn't get the insulin he needed and was sleeping on the streets. And after three months out of the U.S., Aldaoud died Tuesday, likely because of his inability to obtain insulin, Politico reports.

On Wednesday, a video of Aldaoud was posted on Facebook showing him crouching on the street in Iraq. "I've been in the United States since six months old," he said in the video. "I don’t understand the language... I've been throwing up, throwing up, sleeping in the street, trying to find something to eat. I've got nothing over here," he added. Aldaoud said in the video it had been two and a half weeks since his deportation, and after three months in Iraq, he died, the ACLU and Aldaoud's family told Politico.

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Aldaoud's removal came as the Trump administration moved to deport more than 1,400 Iraqis. That included many people in Aldaoud's community of Chaldean Catholics, a group that has faced persecution and violence in the Middle East. Aldaoud was originally placed in a holy city for Shiites, but the ACLU and his family managed to get him to a small group of Chaldeans in Baghdad, per The Washington Post. Still, the insulin he needed was impossible to find, and as immigration attorney who says he's close to Aldaoud's family wrote on Facebook, Aldaoud's "blood is on the hands of ICE and this administration."

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

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