This is the joint testimonial of Sandra and Latif Hafraoui.

Latif: I was born in 1965 in Casablanca, the biggest city in Morocco. I tell people it was similar to Brooklyn or the Bronx. I watched a lot of American movies and TV shows, which got me interested in U.S. culture. I remember watching an episode of Dallas when a character gave a gas station attendant a $50 tip. “Oh wow,” I thought. That was a week’s salary in Morocco.

 I was not religious, and I chafed at certain rules, like you weren’t allowed to drink alcohol. I liked it, so I would go to one of the stores in downtown Casablanca that could sell liquor to foreigners, and I would get them to sell me a bottle of wine. I would hide it in my school bag.

 I wanted to live in America, and because of an uncle who signed papers for me, I got a visa. I arrived on August 15, 1987, at the age of twenty-two. I first went to Austin, Texas, but quickly moved to New York. I found a job as a cashier in a deli, then learned how to make sandwiches. I learned English by watching the news and movies.

Eventually I got a job as a concierge in a residential building.

I’m fascinated by history, and even though I couldn’t vote, I closely followed politics. I was more liberal back then; I had a lot of liberal friends, too. I didn’t like President George H. Bush because he invaded Panama, and I went to protests against his war to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. I was a big fan of Bill Clinton; the economy improved under him. I supported Al Gore in the 2000 campaign, because I knew George W. Bush would go to war again.

I was working at a restaurant on 9/11. A guy walked in with dust all over his head and shoulders. He said he’d just seen a plane hit one of the Twin Towers. As we talked, the second plane hit. I saw lots of people running by covered in dust. 

When Bush invaded Iraq, we knew he lied about the WMDs; we thought that it was just a personal thing to take out Saddam Hussein. 

Sandra: I was born in New Jersey in 1972; when I was eight or nine we moved to Walkersville, a very small town in Maryland. We were pretty well off, probably upper middle class. We grew up in a nice neighborhood; it was pretty secluded. There were no immigrants or foreigners, and only one Black kid in my high school.

My parents were racist. My dad was really an Archie Bunker type. 

I started to rebel as a teenager. I got a job at a restaurant in the nearby city of  Frederick. An Iranian owned it, and a lot of Iranians and Mexicans worked there. I started to get to know these people, and that led me to question what I had been taught. They weren’t how my parents described them; I liked them.

Then I started to date one of them and my father totally lost it. He made me quit my job. We lived out in the sticks, so I couldn’t see that person anymore. 

I couldn’t wait to move out, but things moved more quickly than I anticipated. I started dating a guy from India when I was 17, and my parents kicked me out of the house. I had nowhere else to go, so I went to my boyfriend’s. We ended up getting married, which was a disaster.

After I had my first child, he sent me and the baby to India in 1991 to stay with his family while he tried to save up more money for us. They lived in the town of Naini in the state of Uttar Pradesh. I was a 19-year-old who knew nothing about Indian culture. His parents treated me horribly. They took my passport away and wouldn’t let me go anywhere without their permission.

I begged my husband to send me a ticket to come home, but he refused. I called my parents, but they also said no. They said it was my fault because I had chosen to go to India, and now I had to suffer the consequences of my decision. Through a friend I contacted the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, but they said they couldn’t do anything because there was no threat to my life.

I hatched a plan: I called my husband and told him I had met someone else, and if he didn’t bring me home I would leave him for the other man. Three days later he sent me a ticket to come back to Maryland. 

Shortly after I returned, I left him and filed for divorce. He had abused me emotionally and physically. The police had arrested him several times for beating me. Even after I got a restraining order he’d still break into the house and threaten to kill me. 

Around 1997, I just disappeared. Without telling anyone where I was going, I moved to New York. Friends I made there worked for a black car limo service, and they helped me get a job as a driver. The money was good; I built a house in the Poconos. But the business crashed after 9/11. I sold the house and moved to New Jersey. I still did luxury black car service. That’s how I met Latif.

Latif: It was 2003 or 2004. I worked in a restaurant at that time, and she was my customer. That’s how we met. We would talk about politics.

Sandra: I didn’t pay attention to politics at all. I didn’t know the difference between the parties. Latif was really into history and politics. He leaned left. We were together briefly, but it fizzled out. It’s probably a good thing that it didn’t work out then; my kids were teenagers and were both hellions. They would have driven him away! We didn’t talk for many years.

Latif: Around 2008, I hired a lawyer — Earl David — to help me get a green card. It turns out he was a crook. [David ended up serving five years in prison for immigration fraud.] Plus, he failed to tell me about a scheduled hearing I had in immigration court in 2010. I didn’t go since I didn’t know about it, and they issued a deportation order for me.

Sandra: We reconnected in late 2010, and we got married in 2011. Latif got his work authorization renewed under a special petition for the spouse of a citizen while he pursued permanent residency. 

Latif: I had been glad Barack Obama got elected president. He said he’d get amnesty for immigrants. But he didn’t pull it off. He started DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], but it had no path to citizenship. In the end, I thought he was just another politician.

Sandra: I didn’t like Obama, because of how I was raised, and I didn’t think he was truthful. Also, by this time I was a Christian and did not think he was one too. I somehow discovered YouTube videos Donald Trump was putting out while Obama was in office. I believed Trump’s birther conspiracy theory; I thought Obama was a secret Muslim. I thought Trump was great: a total outsider who talked about how the system was rigged against average people. I thought, “If this guy ran for president, he’d be really good.”

Latif: When Trump ran the first time, I was a big fan, mainly because he was an outsider, not a traditional politician. He promised to shake things up, and he wouldn’t take any big donor money, so he wouldn’t be controlled by them. And, he said he wouldn’t go to war. I thought, “This is the right guy for America.” Even though I couldn’t vote, I convinced a lot of people to vote for him.

After Trump won and tried to ban people from a lot of Muslim countries after he took office, it didn’t bother me because I thought he was trying to prevent terrorism. The economy was good. We got our news almost entirely from Newsmax; we figured they were the truth tellers and that the major media were putting out “fake news,” since that’s what Trump said.

When he ran again in 2020, we took part in events where we stood by the side of the road to wave Trump flags. We even went to one of his rallies in Las Vegas. 

Sandra: When Trump claimed the election was stolen from him, we believed it. However, it was around that time I started to question how truthful Trump was. He had not really kept his promises, and we did not see that much of an improvement in the country. But because we only watched Newsmax and other hard right news (we were still convinced that all other news sources were fake news), I thought the Biden administration was going to hunt down Republicans. Because I was scared and had lost hope in the Republican Party, I switched my registration to independent. 

When Trump ran in 2024, considering how Harris had handled her role as V.P and being swayed by the news we watched, we supported Trump, even though we were not excited about him.

Latif: Trump talked during the campaign about how Biden was a disaster, that he had just opened the borders. He promised mass deportation to get rid of all the violent criminals and terrorists. That’s what we thought he would do.

Sandra: Once Trump took office, we were still only watching Newsmax, and they weren’t telling us how ICE was racially profiling people, picking up green card holders, citizens, and people exercising their First Amendment rights. Newsmax just told us night after night that they were picking up criminals and gang members: “We got this murderer,” “we got that MS-13 member.”

It started getting too depressing and disappointing, and in February or March 2025 we stopped watching Newsmax completely. But because we were convinced all the other channels were fake news, we didn’t watch anything. Honestly, I felt much better not watching the news anymore.

Then on August 11, 2025, we set out for a two-week vacation in Fort Myers, Florida. It was going to be our first time away in years. We got to our terminal at Newark airport early that morning, when three men in plain clothes and a woman with a badge approached us. The woman said she was ICE.

They said Latif’s status was unclear, and before I knew what was happening they had handcuffed him and were taking him away. The woman pointed at me and said, “You don’t want to make a scene here.”

They put Latif into an unmarked van and drove away without telling me where they were taking him. He was dressed for Florida: a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. They took him to Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark. As soon as I could, I got an immigration attorney so we could fight the detention in court.

People held at Delaney Hall have to have money added to an account to make calls from a landline inside the prison. But after a few calls, ICE blocked my number so Latif could not call me. They had refused to say why, but we heard it was an attempt to keep him from getting help. Luckily, I had Latif’s cell phone, so he could call me on that number. 

Latif: Delaney Hall is horrible; it’s run by GEO Group. The staff were nasty to us all the time. The food was terrible, the portions were small. Sometimes you’d get warmed up canned food, or just a bologna sandwich on white bread. There was almost no meat; once a week you got one small piece of chicken. Once they served chickpeas that looked awful. 

They never have a consistent time for meals. Breakfast was sometimes at four-thirty in the morning, sometimes at six. Lunch was sometimes at eleven a.m., other times at two or three o’clock. Dinner might come at four-thirty in the afternoon, or eight o’clock at night. And while you’re eating, the guards are always rushing you: “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” They always tried to provoke us. While we were trying to sleep, they would be talking loudly in the halls on their walkie-talkies. 

One day, they took me to JFK Airport, and then told me someone had bought me a ticket to go to Morocco, insinuating it was my wife. I knew they were lying; I told them I didn’t know anyone who would buy me a ticket, and anyway, I had a legal case pending. They threatened me, saying that if I didn’t board the plane they would put me in a real prison for one year. Finally, they took me back to Delaney Hall and put me in solitary confinement for ten days.

Then they put me on a plane and flew me to Louisiana, to the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center. On the plane, our hands and feet were shackled. There was nothing to eat or drink, and it was impossible to use the bathroom. After we landed, they crammed us like sardines into a van with no AC — and this was August in Louisiana. It took over an hour and a half to drive to the facility. They told me they were processing me. I sat there for a week. We didn’t have clean clothes or showers the entire time. And I didn’t have any personal belongings, no money.

Sandra: I call it a kidnapping. They don’t tell you ahead of time when they’re about to move you. And they remove the money from your account so you can’t let anyone know. For over a week, I didn’t know where Latif was. You couldn’t find him on the ICE locator, he wasn’t calling, even our lawyer couldn’t find him. ICE wouldn’t return her or my calls or emails. You cannot imagine how hysterical I was. I contacted human rights groups, which put us in touch with Congressman Rob Menendez, who got involved in our case.

Latif: Then one day, they put me on a plane and flew me to Arizona. By the time we landed that morning, a judge in New York had thrown out the deportation order against me. Meanwhile in Arizona, an ICE agent tried to put me on a charter flight to Morocco.

Sandra: Which would have been a total violation of his constitutional right to due process.

Latif: I told the agent I had a pending case, and he agreed to check. He found out about the ruling, and said, “OK, you’re good.” 

Sandra: Latif had managed to call from Arizona, so I finally knew where he was. But then they flew him back to Louisiana without telling me. Again, I couldn’t find him on the ICE locator, and they wouldn’t even tell our lawyer. We reached out again to Congressman Menendez for help.

Latif: They kept me there for a couple more weeks. Again, no showers. One day they took me, along with a bunch of other Arabs, to Alexandria International Airport. They were trying to put me on a flight to Qatar.

Sandra: Congressman Menendez found out Latif was in Louisiana, and told ICE they had no legal right to hold him. That worked, and they returned Latif to New Jersey.

Sandra: Meanwhile, even though we had won in court, we had to have a separate bond hearing to get Latif released. But we had to get the case transferred from New York to New Jersey, since that was where he was detained. That took several more weeks.

Latif: When they brought me back from Louisiana to Delaney Hall in New Jersey, I asked a guard for shampoo and soap so I could finally take a shower. He said, “We don’t have any.” I knew that wasn’t true; I argued with him, and he threatened me, and almost started to fight me. I finally forced him to fetch his supervisor, who gave me the soap and shampoo.

Sandra: I called the office to complain. The officer lied and said, “We give him everything he needs.” Then a few days later, I came to visit Latif. I knew that in Louisiana they were torturing him, threatening him, bullying him, denying him food, showers, clothes, mentally screwing with him. But I didn’t know the extent until I visited him for the first time after he returned to Delaney. I was so upset. Latif was a mental disaster. He was so skinny, and totally freaked out. He seemed so nervous, his voice was shaking. He was having a hard time speaking coherently. He looked totally terrified and traumatized. He asked me, “Are they going to deport me?” He was talking like someone with PTSD. We’ve seen the face of the devil; they did a lot of really evil stuff to Latif.

And it’s not like Delaney’s much better. The food there is so bad that most of the prisoners eat ramen they buy — at extremely inflated prices — at the commissary. After I visited Latif one Sunday, he called me at home at around nine o’clock that evening to say that they never gave them dinner. 

Latif: They said, “Sorry, the kitchen’s closed.” We said we hadn’t gotten our dinner, and they said, “Too bad, the kitchen’s closed.”

Sandra: So I called the office; by now it was about ten o’clock. The woman who answered was very nasty. “We give them everything, how dare you say we aren’t feeding them?” she said. “My husband is not a liar,” I said. I had talked to another guy’s wife who was livid that they hadn’t been fed. The agent says, “Let me put you on hold.” I waited at least half an hour before she came back, picked up the phone, said, “We’re going to feed them now, alright?” and hung up on me.

Another time I had filed a complaint about the treatment of the prisoners with DHS, and they blocked me at the gate when I tried to visit Latif.

When I visited Latif at Delaney, there was no waiting room, so we had to stand outside a fence next to the road. One day I was out there with a bunch of other people, a lot of moms with kids, devastated that their breadwinner was detained, out of money, worried about getting evicted. The kids were crying for their dads, we were all crying. A humanitarian group had set up a table to give people food and coffee. Then along comes a caravan of motorcycles and cars driving back and forth, all with Trump and American flags, screaming obscenities at us. They didn’t care that there were children there. It was, “Fuck you all, deport all those motherfuckers, get them out of our fucking country.”

I couldn’t believe I had actually supported that side!

We finally got the bond hearing, paid a $15,000 bond, and after 108 days in detention, they released Latif the day before Thanksgiving. The government is still holding his passport.

After his release, Latif had to wear an ankle monitor for three months. Now he must check in at an ICE office every month. His green card is in process.

Latif: We just learned ICE agents must deport eight people a day. That’s why they’re going crazy; sometimes they arrest citizens just because they look Mexican. They’re just trying to make their numbers. The murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good wouldn’t even happen in Morocco. ICE is acting like gangsters. I’m terrorized by these killings of citizens.

Sandra: And the breaking into houses, smashing windows, busting down doors with no warrant, illegal searches and seizures. They’re violating the Constitution all over the place. It’s evil; they don’t see immigrants as human beings, they see them as trash to be discarded.

Latif: Meanwhile, Trump lied about “no more wars.” Not only did he not stop the war in Ukraine, but he’s started a war in Iran. Everything he promises, he does the opposite. The other day we put on Newsmax — now we can see how much propaganda it is. All lies. Talking about the Iran war, how they’re removing the Iranian threat, like it’s such a good thing, how Trump is so courageous and he’s saving America. This is not even a winnable war.

Sandra: Since leaving MAGA we now notice the lies, broken promises, and evil agenda. Things are not as they seem on the surface. May God open the eyes of many others. 

Sadly, since nj.com published our story, we have gotten a massive amount of hate mail from the left and the right. We were getting flooded with social media messages from people cursing us out. People on the left were saying, “I hope you both get deported.” “You got what you voted for.” And people on the right were saying, “He was illegal, I hope you both get deported.” Some even sent hate mail through regular mail. We had to turn off social media messaging. 

Latif: We decided to tell our stories to Leaving MAGA because we knew we would be treated with respect. Our experience has opened our eyes to lies we were fed by MAGA. Now we’re beginning a journey of educating ourselves to see what else Trump has lied about, to learn the truth about everything, and follow the Bible instead of a political group.

                                                                                                                                                                                    —March 2026