19-year-old Nooran Amin knows the drill by now at the Best Sub #2 sandwich shop in Humboldt Park. Until last fall, he was a college student at Dominican University who loved watching football and sending Instagram reels to his friends. But everything changed last September.

That’s when Nooran’s father, 64-year-old Asif Amin Cheema, was detained by federal immigration agents just three minutes from his home during the early days of Operation Midway Blitz. Despite having no criminal record, he was arrested because he had a removal order for a missed court date, something the family says their former immigration lawyer did not tell them about.

Nooran’s dad spent close to three months in detention at the Clay County Jail in Indiana. He lost 30 pounds and experienced various health complications. On New Year’s Day, he was deported to Pakistan, a place where he hadn’t lived for more than 30 years.

Since then, the family has been trying to keep the sandwich shop afloat while settling into a busier — and decidedly harder — new life without their patriarch. And as the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign continues to upend the lives of families throughout the United States, they wonder whether the country where Cheema built his life still welcomes them.

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Story by @eyjkang/WBEZ
Photos by Esther Yoon-Ji Kang/WBEZ, @candace.dane & @tylerpasciaklariviere/Sun-Times, provided