By Eloge Willy Kaneza
Portland, Maine — In a powerful open letter addressed to U.S. President Donald Trump and to all people of goodwill, a Congolese refugee—identified here as Sabine Magna, a pseudonym used to protect her identity—shares a harrowing account of fear, exile, and survival. Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she fled her home country after facing death threats from agents of the government.
Now living in the United States, she says she has escaped one danger only to find herself trapped in another — the constant fear of arrest, deportation, and being torn away from the life she is trying to rebuild with her children.
“I live with fear in my stomach,” she writes. “Fear of going out to look for work, even when my children are hungry. Fear of going to the hospital when one of them gets sick.”
The American dream, slipping away
Sabine says she grew up idolizing the United States — a land of freedom, a country where human dignity is respected. But that dream, she now says, is turning into a nightmare. Living without legal status, she hides in the shadows, like thousands of others who sought refuge on American soil.
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“We live in the shadows, hidden, psychologically broken — but in silence.”
She describes being unable to feed her children because she’s too afraid to work. She avoids taking them to the doctor out of fear of being tracked and arrested. “What have we done to deserve this?” she asks. “Why such rejection of human beings who only want to live in peace?”
A direct appeal to President Trump
Sabine’s letter is not just a cry of distress — it is a direct appeal to President Trump’s sense of justice and humanity. She urges him to see the suffering behind immigration statistics, to understand the fear etched into the daily lives of mothers like her.
“You don’t build a stronger country by breaking those who are already down.
You don’t protect a nation by crushing the most vulnerable.”
She invites him to put himself in her place, to imagine his own children crying from hunger or fear, and to consider the unbearable choices she is forced to make.
A life hanging in the balance
Her letter ends with a chilling statement that reveals the depth of her desperation:
“If one day they come to arrest me and send me back, I would rather die.
Because sending me back is sentencing me to death.”
Sabine Magna’s testimony shines a light on a side of the immigration debate that is often overlooked: the human side. As political tensions rise and policies grow more restrictive under the Trump administration, her words serve as a stark reminder that behind each case, behind each number, is a life, a family, and a fragile hope for safety.
Her voice joins a growing chorus of asylum seekers who are not asking for pity — only to be seen, heard, and treated with dignity.
