In a two-bedroom east Charlotte apartment and at the Islamic Center just down the street, Eza Omar\u2019s childhood filled with memories of her uncle.<\/p>\n
Read more Wake County deputies make arrests in two separate stabbings hours apart<\/a><\/p>\n She\u2019d sit at his feet and look up as he and her parents went back and forth \u201cjust talking\u2026 talking, talking, talking,\u201d Omar told The Charlotte Observer in a recent interview. Omar was maybe six years old, and her big brother and little sister were probably on the floor with her, she said. Above, her mother\u2019s brother, Abdullahi Mohamed<\/a>, cradled a cup of tea in his hands and talked to her parents about their Central Avenue community, the news of the day and the global events that dominated the early 2000s.<\/p>\n That scene, she said \u2014 the tea, the living room, the hours of talking \u2014 reflected their Somali culture.<\/p>\n But for seven weeks toward the end of last year, talking wasn\u2019t an option.<\/p>\n At a routine check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in October, agents took Mohamed and revoked the terms he\u2019d lived under for 20 years. He seemingly vanished. And about month after he was taken, federal immigration agents swarmed Charlotte and the very neighborhood that held Omar\u2019s cherished memories.<\/p>\n \u201cHis community here,\u201d Omar said, \u201cwas suffering the same way that he was.\u201d<\/p>\n Mohamed followed his sister, who is Omar\u2019s mother, to the United States and applied for asylum after he made it across the Mexican border in 1999, documents say. Omar\u2019s mother became a U.S. citizen after being naturalized during the first Trump administration, which spanned from 2018 to 2021. Her story veers from her brother\u2019s.<\/p>\n Mohamed\u2019s asylum application was denied, and immigration judges ordered him to leave in 2001 and later rejected his appeal in 2002. But he was still allowed to stay, since Somalia \u2014fractured by civil war and without central government \u2014 was difficult to deport to.<\/p>\n So Mohamed got a work permit. To keep it, he regularly checked in with ICE. He lived for 10 years in east Charlotte\u2019s immigrant corridor and frequented the Islamic Center of Charlotte. Then he lived another 10 years in Maine, working as a taxi driver with his wife.<\/p>\n Until Oct. 23, when, without warning or time to prepare for deportation, the government took him in Scarborough, Maine, and moved him around faster than Omar and her family could keep up, The Marshall Project reported<\/a> in June.<\/p>\n Omar, now a 25-year-old behavioral therapist who works with autistic children in Charlotte, was five hours into her shift and working with a girl no older than 6 when her phone pinged.<\/p>\n Abti<\/i> \u2014 Somali for uncle \u2014 was taken by ICE,<\/i> her little sister texted.<\/p>\n \u201cI just stood up, and I looked to the lead therapist and said \u2018Can you watch her?\u2019\u201d Omar said in a recent interview, \u201cand I just walked out the front of the building.\u201d<\/p>\n Outside, she called her sister, and they sat in silence.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to call mom,<\/i> Omar finally said.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t,<\/i> her sister responded. She\u2019s calling lawyers.<\/i><\/p>\n So Omar went back inside and finished her shift. When she got home, Omar urged her mom to file a habeas corpus petition before officials moved Mohamed. She knew that was important, she said, because she kept up with the news \u2014 like her abti had done when she was younger.<\/p>\n She knew if he was in a new district by the time they filed the paperwork, which requires the government to bring him to court, he could get lost in the system.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s exactly what happened, she said. He was in Massachusetts for seven weeks through November. Then in Mississippi. Then Louisiana.<\/p>\n Read more Tillis warns of midterm impact of ‘unforced errors,\u2019 shifting some blame to Trump<\/a><\/p>\n As he disappeared, masked federal agents filled Charlotte immigrant neighborhoods \u2014 especially east Charlotte \u2014 from Nov. 15 to Nov. 22 and arrested people on the street.<\/p>\n Videos of agents outside Omar\u2019s childhood apartment were chilling, she said, but the scenes along Central Avenue and protesters outside Manolo\u2019s Bakery<\/a> brought some comfort. In them, she saw her uncle\u2019s fighting spirit.<\/p>\n But with each call, which could come from anywhere and at any time, Mohamed had a little less power behind his voice.<\/p>\n \u201cI just want to be out by Ramadan,\u201d he said sometime in November, when Ramadan was three months away.<\/p>\n Desperate for answers, Omar\u2019s family asked U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis for help locating her uncle. Even his information came too late.<\/p>\n Mohamed\u2019s last call came in early December from an undisclosed airport. Then from a country he hadn\u2019t been in since the turn of the century.<\/p>\n Mohamed was deported back to Somalia Dec. 18, about a month after President Donald Trump on Nov. 21 announced on his social media platform that he was \u201cterminating, effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS Program) for Somalis\u201d \u2014 a move made as agents raided Minnesota, which is home to a large Somali community.<\/p>\n \u201cSomali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing,\u201d the president said, referencing a fraud scheme tied to some Somali<\/a> Americans. \u201cSend them back to where they came from. It\u2019s OVER!\u201d<\/p>\n A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts blocked the administration\u2019s termination of TPS<\/a> for Somalia and has temporarily extended its time on a list of protected places people cannot be deported back to.<\/p>\n But agents flew Mohamed out before that court order came down. He remains there, in a motel paid for by his only living family in Charlotte. He\u2019s banged up after detention, Omar says, and her family wants him to get medical help for his broken nose and elbow and document his physical and psychological scars.<\/p>\n On May 21, six months after Omar\u2019s family had asked one of their senators for help, a letter on Tillis\u2019 official letterhead said what the family already knew.<\/p>\n Mohamed was gone.<\/p>\n This story was originally published July 2, 2026 at 5:00 AM<\/span> with the headline “\u2018Abti was taken\u2019: Charlotte family left in dark as uncle was shipped to Somalia.” <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n