When people imagine deportation, they often picture the law catching up to seedy criminals operating outside of the system, being exiled for some illicit activity. At the very least, the notion of deportation suggests deliberate rule-breaking. But this hasn’t been my personal experience. My experiences being deported – twice – tell a different story. They reveal how bureaucratic systems, often opaque and inconsistent, can punish anyone, even those trying to follow the rules.

The first time it happened was in Türkiye. I had moved there for my PhD, and like many foreigners in academic programs, I trusted my institution to handle the residence permit paperwork. I provided the few documents they needed, paid my fees, answered some questions, and put the rest in their hands. They assured me the application had been submitted and everything was in order, and I had no reason to doubt it. Months later, when I arrived at Istanbul Airport to fly home for Christmas, I thought it would be a simple matter of showing my application receipt to passport control and informing them that my residence was in process and would be finalised in the new year. The officer scanned my passport, looked at me, scanned it again, then informed me (to my great surprise) that I had overstayed my visa and was being fined and deported.

At the time, my life was in Türkiye: my apartment with all my clothes and books, my bank account and all my money, my friends, and my work. I decided to keep my return flight and planned to plead my case at the airport when I returned in January. This time, again at passport control, the situation escalated. I was taken aside and escorted to a small, windowless room tucked behind immigration control - something between a waiting area and a holding cell. I waited there, at 1:00 am, for about an hour before I was handed a document written entirely in Turkish and told to sign it. I asked what it said, but the officers didn’t speak English. Behind me, another man was struggling with his own case; he had just arrived from another country, but his passport only had two months’ validity left. He should not have been allowed to board his plane, and now in Istanbul, he was unable to enter the country, but also unable to book another flight out. In the end, I signed the form, which I later learned was a declaration that I would regularise my legal status within ten days or face imprisonment.

What followed was a bureaucratic scavenger hunt. I spent days navigating government offices across the city, each with its own set of requirements. Some were closed on random days. Others sent me away because I lacked documents that no one had previously mentioned. I waited in lines, paid fees I didn’t fully understand, and retraced my steps multiple times as I pieced together what was needed. Eventually, I resolved the situation just in time.

About three years later, bureaucracy struck again, this time in Kosovo. I was registering a company to apply for residence, having been advised that this was the appropriate route for entrepreneurs. I submitted everything that was required and waited. But the process dragged on longer than promised.

Deadlines passed, not because I wasn’t attentive, but because the paperwork moved more slowly than the system allowed for. Aware that my 90-day visa was about to end, I went to the police station to explain the situation and ask if an extension was possible. I sat there as the officer made ticks on a piece of paper to count the number of days I’d already been in the country. I felt my heart drop as his tally reached 92. I’d spent a week in Albania during the three months, which I assumed wouldn’t count towards the Kosovo visa, but the Albanian border guards didn’t stamp my passport, so it seemed that I’d been in Kosovo the entire time. With no evidence that I hadn’t actually overstayed, I was made to sign a declaration of voluntary deportation. They held my passport, and I was given 24 hours to gather my things before self-deporting to Macedonia.

Just days later, I received the documents confirming the incorporation of my company, and I was able to return to Pristina to secure my residence permit.

In both cases, I wasn’t trying to bend the rules; I was trying to follow them. I was proactive. I was in contact with the authorities. I asked questions and I planned ahead. But none of that mattered in the end. What these experiences taught me is that modern immigration systems aren’t designed to reward compliance. They’re built around rigid frameworks, slow-moving processes, and shifting requirements - systems that routinely fail the very people trying to navigate them in good faith.

Bureaucracy, by design, relies on the assumption that people understand the system they are navigating. In theory, it’s meant to ensure fairness and consistency. But in practice, these systems are confusing, even to the well-educated and well-organised. Requirements are unclear. Processes vary by office, city, or day of the week. Translation is often unavailable. Appeals or explanations don’t factor into automated enforcement mechanisms. It assumes access to information, reliable translations, and consistent procedures across offices and officials - assumptions that fall apart quickly, especially for foreigners. One missing document, one miscommunication, one closed office can derail the whole process.

Worse still, bureaucracy can lose sight of the human needs it is supposed to serve. Rules become more important than judgment, and compliance is valued over compassion. Nowhere is this clearer than in the U.S. immigration system right now, where the machinery of enforcement (particularly through agencies like ICE) is operating with a total indifference to individual lives. People are detained or deported not because they pose a threat, but because they’ve failed to comply with an administrative system so labyrinthine and unforgiving that even those who try to “do it the right way” are punished.

The designation of someone as “illegal” is not a neutral legal fact but the outcome of a bureaucratic framework that criminalises existence based on paperwork and arbitrary borders. In this system, being born on the wrong side of a line or missing a deadline becomes a justification for tearing families apart. Bureaucracy, in these cases, does not uphold justice but becomes a tool for institutionalised cruelty, outsourcing moral responsibility to forms, policies, and procedural necessity. When process eclipses purpose, the system begins to work against itself, undermining trust and eroding the legitimacy on which it depends. It not only fails to help but actively damages everything it touches.

My story isn’t unique. I had the advantages of education, a strong passport, and an international support network. I had years of experience living abroad. I wasn’t fleeing violence or persecution, and I wasn’t undocumented. And still, I ended up deported (twice) because the systems I tried to work within failed to accommodate human error or bureaucratic delay.

It’s easy to dismiss “illegal” immigration as a simple matter of lawbreaking, or even as a more complicated matter of individuals from unstable countries willing to cut corners to escape persecution. But the truth is far messier. Many people fall out of legal status not because they ignore the rules, but because they are caught in systems that don’t function well, that are slow, inconsistent, or miscommunicated, and that punish good-faith efforts with fines, bans, or worse. My own experiences have taught me that legality is often a matter of paperwork, not morality. And that bureaucracies, once broken, don’t care how carefully you tried to play by the rules. That’s something worth remembering the next time we hear about someone being deported. Often, it’s not about borders or safety; it’s about forms that weren’t processed in time, stamps that were missing, or systems that didn’t speak the same language as the people trying to follow them.