Sam Kangethe sat on a plastic container in his 5-year-old daughter Ella’s room — a giant in a kingdom of toppled toys.

His flight to Kenya was leaving soon, he gently her. He was going somewhere safe, and she could reach him anytime. And one day, he promised, she’d come too, and together they’d watch pink flamingoes under the African sky.

Her soft sobs erupted into cries that filled the room. “I love you. You’re my bestie,” he whispered as he pulled her close, in a moment captured on video.

It was August, just before the start of the school year, and Kangethe was returning to the country he’d left 16 years before to attend college in Michigan.

He wasn’t just going on a vacation or to visit relatives. As an immigrant living in the US without permanent residency, he was self-deporting to his homeland.

Kangethe was leaving his wife, Latavia, and their three children at the home they shared in Lansing, Michigan, about 90 miles from Detroit. And he didn’t know when, or if, he’d be back.

Ella, the youngest, clung to him in the moments before he left for the airport. In her room, father and daughter shared one final moment among her dollhouses, Barbies and figurines.

“I was trying to divert her attention … and focus on when she will come visit me,” Kangethe said later. “Pink is her favorite color. The idea was to show her there is some good that can come from me leaving instead of sad and negative things.”

Burdened with anxiety over the possibility of sudden deportation to an unfamiliar country where he knew no one, Kangethe, 39, decided in March to return to Kenya. It was a choice that gave him time to prepare his family.

Ella chats over video with her dad after he self-deported to Kenya. Courtesy Latavia Kangethe

He spent the next few months doing just that. He quit his job as a state accountant in May to free up his summer. Family dinners stretched longer. So did evening board games. At night, he lingered in the kids’ doorways, trying to memorize their faces.

And now, the dreaded day – August 17 – had arrived. After his conversation with Ella and last hugs with his wife and their two other children, he loaded five suitcases, a backpack and a golf bag in a red truck. A friend drove him to the Detroit airport to spare his family the heartbreak of rushed goodbyes at the terminal, he said.

Back home in Lansing, Latavia and the c