Episode Details

I want to tell you a story.

It is 2018, and I am a recent college graduate.

I’m 23 years old. My high school best friend and I decide to take a little trip to Montreal. We’ve never been. It seems like a really fun idea. She knows French. It felt like a cool thing to do. And we’re in New York City, so it’s a short flight.

We get on the plane early in the morning. It’s a very full flight. Boarding was hectic. I remember it being really hard to get our overhead storage and throw things in. Whatever, it was a short flight.

We arrive in Montreal, and it’s still very early. Maybe 8 AM. We get to customs, and we’re about to show our passports to the gate person.

And I can’t find mine. I can’t find my passport.

And I know I have it, because I wouldn’t have been allowed on the plane without it. They checked our passports coming into the airport in New York, and then again at the gate. I know I have it. I got on the plane with this passport. I know that.

But I don’t have it now. I don’t have my passport.

I’ll remind you again that it is 2018 and I am an African American woman.

Trump had just been elected during the fall semester of my senior year at Vassar, which I wrote about here.

It’s 2018, and we are two years into Trump’s first administration and I am an African American woman in a different country than I was born in without my passport.

I am losing my shit. I am having what I now know is a panic attack.

My friend, thankfully, was able to keep it together and made sure that I had WhatsApp installed on my phone so that we could communicate after she went through customs and I went back to the plane to look for my passport.

I don’t even really remember the gate number where we got deplaned, but I’m just sprinting through the airport with my carry-on, and I’m probably crying at this point, too.

When I finally find the gate, I’m told that they’ve searched and cleaned the plane. I can’t go look myself.

And now I’m really freaking out.

I’m walking back when an airport worker comes by with one of those big carts—the ones for luggage or people with disabilities. He offers me a ride back to customs.

I’m a sweaty, bawling mess.

I keep chanting, “They’re going to deport me. They’re going to deport me. I don’t have a passport—they’re going to deport me.”

This very kind Canadian airport worker asks, “Where are you from?”

“New York.”“So, why would we deport you? Where would we deport you?” “Africa, obviously.“Huh??”

He tells me his daughter lives in New York. He’s trying to distract me because I’m hysterical, and he’s doing his best to just be this gentle, lovely Canadian man. It works, but only a little bit.

When I get back to customs, my friend is waiting for me. I’m given a slip of paper and sent to the customs office to sort things out.

At the office, they ask me questions. Everything is above board, all in public—I’m not taken into any backrooms, thankfully. I’m sent to the help desk to see if my passport has turned up.

We haven’t even gotten our luggage yet—we’re just running around looking for my passport.

And do you know what the guy at the desk says, when I give him my name?

“Oh, there you are! Yeah, we found it. We tried to call you. You didn’t answer. Here it is.”

They’d found it while cleaning the plane and had been calling me ever since. But I hadn’t answered because I was running around convinced I was about to be deported.

It was the best moment of my life.

In the same breath, the guy says, “The baggage is still coming out. They might have lost some of the bags.”

I couldn’t have cared less about my bags. They could’ve thrown my bags in the ocean for al